A Wedding Quilt

Earlier this year, my mother passed away. She was a prolific quilter and made quilts for those she loved as well as many charity quilts for those in need.

When my nephew announced his engagement, I was asked if I had found the quilt my mother was planning to make for when he got married (we all knew that the engagement was coming soon). Going through her stash, I did not find anything that looked like a quilt for the upcoming wedding.

SO, I reached out to the bride-to-be and asked what colors they were planning for their home and she said ... "neutrals" ... which didn't surprise me, but neutral is hard to pin down. Grey has been the prevailing neutral recently and my mom didn't have much grey in her stash. So I expanded neutral into the warm neutrals and went from the lightest (white) to the darkest (black) in my fabric choices.

 

I chose to use the pattern Kira by GE Designs as I know that mom had that pattern, I just modernized the setting a bit in my layout, radiating from lightest to darkest. I needed to add a border to bring it up to size, so added just one border (not the two from the pattern).

When choosing a quilting design, I knew mom would have just done a meander as that was what she was most comfortable with, but I chose to do Creeping Fig E2E on the quilt. I knew she would have loved the design (and the bride and groom did, too).

I had to bring my sewing machine along as the binding was not finished when it was time to leave ... so the binding was sewn on the day before the wedding!

The quilt was finished up in time - and looks really good! The warm fabrics in the quilt will go very well with the bed frame that the groom's father made for the couple, while the cooler neutrals keep it from being too lodge-like. (quilt is being held by the groom's sister and grandfather)

 

It was a lovely outdoor wedding, the gorgeous fall colors were a fantastic backdrop to the ceremony (though it was a bit chilly!)

 

The groom's father and brother provided the music - all around it was a beautiful wedding and my mother would have loved it.

Even though they weren't opening gifts until the next day, the bride and groom did open up the quilt while I was there. That way they could get the whole story (not just the abbreviated story on the label) from me as well as from my dad. They seemed to like it a lot and tears were shed as we all thought of the provider of the fabrics.

Many prayers were sewn into this quilt - May Jack and Helen be blessed in their new adventure together!