Secret Quilt Blog

My Quilting Aunties

I stopped into Button Box in Wellesley today to grab another half yard of a fabric I was short on for Aidan’s quilt and to have a chat with one of the many little hens who work there about a conceptual problem I was having with the wedding quilt.

Enough people have given me significantly more fabric than I need that I was thinking of backing the quilt in spare fabric from people and emblems from T-shirts like the one that Debbie gave us - and maybe a few others we have laying around that we don’t wear.  The problem I was having is that, for quilting purposes, I’d like the fronts and backs to line up.  I’d thought of about a hundred ways to accomplish this and they all seemed super complex and/or impossible…but after a bunch of brainstorming, they suggested a technique I’ve never heard of and that I think solves several problems about this project.

Quilt as you go!

So basically you quilt every block and the backing piece that goes with it individually and *then* you assemble it into the big thing once it’s all done.

1) This means that I can make sure that back and front squares line up.

2) This means that I don’t have to assemble the whole front and the whole back and then assemble/sandwich/quilt/bind under the gun at the end - I can make pieces as they come in and then just assemble at the end - or even assemble as I have enough to assemble - which is brilliant.

3) I have a ton of batting chunks laying around and this will use them up nicely! 

4) I can do it with or without sashing - but I think that sashing an otherwise super crazy quilt will unify it nicely.

This is all very exciting.  I have three blocks done and conveniently three blocks of backing cut - so as soon as I get my sewing machine back from its warrantied cleaning/repair - I can start on this!

Wedding Chuppah Quilt

For our wedding in June, I’ve asked our friends and relatives to mail us fabric with their RSVPs.  Now invitations haven’t gone out yet, but I’ve gotten a bunch from people I see regularly so that I could begin already.  In my mind, I need a minimum of 25 blocks, I have a goal of 36, and the most I could do without it becoming ridiculous is 64. 

There are 200 invited guests and they’ve been given the prompt to “send fabric or fabrics representing yourselves -or-send a pre-made 12 inch quilt block” - if everyone does the assignment, there are 112 physical invites going out - so that means with 2 color blocks - 56ish possible - so far we’ve gotten one fabric per couple - athough I think a friend is planning to send fabric to represent each of her, her husband and her kids, which if people go that route would change things - I also am really hoping that someone sends us a quilt block because that would be pretty cool - but if they don’t I can handle it.  :) 

So far we’ve gotten some purchased fabric and also some clothing - a friend tried to give me a silk robe - which was pretty, but not washable.  Jersey and nylon are *super* hard to work with in this context.  I’ve been sure so far to match up stretchy and floaty fabrics with really stiff counterparts - but you can see from the paperpinwheel that it doesn’t always go as planned.  That block is actually a little smaller than the others, I might have to border it honestly - something about the silky fabric in the middle changed when I cut and sewed it.  I love a good challenge, though!

I’ve also cut the the front and back motifs off of the t-shirt in 12.5 inch squares - and then cut 12.5 inch hunks out of the fabrics that I have enough of (some I don’t or haven’t - the vintage came in pre-cut squares and the spoonflower was just the sample swatch and I used *all* of it) and hope to make the back in 12 inch blocks that line up wiht the front - which sounds crazy, but I think is doable…so that when I quilt it, the stitch in the ditch lines grid up on the back. 

I’m probably going to quilt it in a grid since it’s a sampler quilt and I probably won’t have much time in the finshing stages - this is a wedding and it’s gonna be my chuppah after all - must.be.done.  So I’ll stich in the ditches and then I’ll just go down the middle line at 6 inches on each square.  That should hold just fine and be easy enough to do.

3 down - 22 or 33 to go!  Invites go out in a few weeks, so hopefully fabric will start piling in at that point…and also my birthday party happens about a week after the invites go out, so I hope I can encourage people to bring their RSVPs with them.  This seems like a good idea.  I guess we’ll all find out.

Streak of Lightning with Vintage Scraps & Spoonflower Custom

My Blue Heaven with a t-shirt & some quilting fabric.

Paper Pinwheel with silky shirt & cotton fabric.

Nathan & Natalie’s Wedding Quilt Done

In a spree in September I finished Nathan & Natalie’s wedding quilt, literally just in time to leave…actually I was still snipping threads on the car ride up and didn’t end up wrapping it.  Worst, presentation ever- here’s your wedding gift…in this trash bag.  For the middles, I ended up finding pictures of continuous line paths online, blowing them up in photoshop to the size I wanted and then printing them on drafting tissue paper…then sewing through them and ripping the paper out.  It worked pretty well, and with practice, I think I could be pretty good at it.

I’ll get steadier with practice.

Looks better from a distance.

Looking as tired as I feel….stayed up all night to finish it!

My favorite part, the creepy ass matrimony patch.  Secret joy.