Quilty Habit dresden rainbow wedding quilt...

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Jessica from Quilty Habit submitted this amazing dresden wedding quilt. Amazing quilt right? Quilty Habit blog is a great blog for all things quilt. She is a talented lady! Take a look at her quilt finishes, pretty great stuff. Here are some of the tutorials she offers. Jessica is one talented quilting lady! 

This post is three years in the making! No joke. I've been wondering how it would come out since I started blogging - I had just gotten engaged at the time! Ever since about 2011, I've only showed little bits and pieces of this quilt's progress. Seriously, I can't even explain how happy I am to share it all today! It's a big milestone for me as a quilter and a blogger. This is a long post with lots of pictures - fair warning ;).

Mike and I have been together 7 years as of this November. As many of you know, we got married last October, and we are finally living together! It really is the best feeling in the world to have such a person in my life who believes in me like I never could believe, who pours me Mountain Dew when I'm down, who will watch any episode of Doctor Who with me (even if he wants to watch a different one), who knows how to read my face before I even know what I'm feeling, and who loves me through it all. We support each other even when the going is tough job-wise, and we know it will all turn out okay in the end, as long as we are together. I truly believe that, and I know he does, too. 

This quilt is the story of our relationship - through the silly times, the sad ones, and the beautiful ones. Dresdens were one of the very first quilty patterns I became obsessed with. In addition, I didn't intend for the quilt to randomly alternate between low and high saturation, in the dresden plates and borders, but boy, do I love the look it creates now that it's all done!! 

You can read all about my dresden-making here, here, here, and here - when they were all finished. These are just some of the posts. Please don't smirk too much at my humble bloggy beginnings ;).

The dresdens took a loooong time; I did one a month or so with the help and encouragement of bloggy friends (some of you are still out there - thanks for sticking with me so long!). I also had to stop and start constantly because I was visiting home from college only every so often. Thus, the wedding quilt lingered in a pile, because there were other things to make (as usual), and I knew I would be able to finish it before/after the wedding/at least when it was closer (we were engaged for two years beforehand).

The middle block is my favorite, and include many of my all-time favorite fabrics for each color. I embroidered the middle within the last year.

The front of this quilt means the most to me, as a quilter. It included scraps of many fabrics I no longer have, or have very little left of. The dresdens are more traditional fabrics overall, but the coordinating borders around them, the middle block, and the coordinating binding that lines up against each block all feature some of my current favorite fabrics. It is such a joy to look it over and see how far I've come with fabric selection, piecing, and quilting. You might remember that at our guild retreat in July, I finished ALL of the quilting and was super ecstatic about it!

Here are the block closeups, and I've included the FMQ design I chose for each individual block (it was very difficult to get the quilting to show up - I tried in all different kinds of light!). There is one "silly" fabric in each plate just for Mike :) (see if you can find them all!). You'll also notice that I left the colored borders unquilted - in person, they pop out from the quilt, and it is too cool! (quilt nerd - out).

1 of 2 blue dresdens - the color I had/have the most of. Free-motion quilted with clouds to mimic the sky. Mike's favorite color.

Purple - my favorite color and some of my favorite fabrics ever, ever, ever. FMQed in rainbows - definitely my favorite FMQ design :)

Red - many traditional fabrics (P.S. did you catch the traveling gnome?). FMQed with swirls and pearls (they kind of look like seashells :) ).

Orange - quilted with square flowers, as inspired by Angela Walters.

Yellow - FMQed in pebbles. I very nearly took this block out and remade it, because at the time, some of the only yellows I had were Amy Butler's Soul Blossoms, which, as you can see, contain a healthy amount of bright teal. I decided to leave it because it doesn't make a difference in the overall quilt, and I want to embrace my early quilt-making.

 Green - FMQed in a woodgrain design (trees... get it?)

Pink - FMQed with chrysanthemums, thanks to Rachel at Stitched in Color. I love how this one turned out, even though I'm not a huge fan of pink! You'll also notice several repeats in this block, like others, because I did not yet have a "stash" (which of course is fine!). The middle fabric here is a special one handed down from my mother.

The second blue block - FMQed in an all-over random square pattern.

A close up of the quilting - you can see the FMQ designs I used for the white sashings (loops and the wavy lines). They were easy and necessary fillers.

Pinterest inspired the backing, though I've only seen quilt fronts in this fashion. I set up a table at the wedding for our guests to write messages and their names (and little did I know, drawings) - our guestbook! I backed each 6" square with freezer paper (I was doing that two nights before the wedding, lol) to make them easier to write on. I used special fabric markers - when I find them and the brand I used, I will post it here.Note to self: draw out or tape up the seam allowances next time!

Either way, I absolutely love how it came out. I chose the purple, blue, yellow, and green solids to contrast the bright front of the quilt. I love how calming it is... much like the beach, come to think of it. The white strips were meant to break up the color a bit.

Also, I didn't want it to be centered, and I placed random squares in the negative space to add something more than just the signatures. I love to look at the back of this quilt just as much as the front - it is just sospecial to me. Quilters - don't use a regular guestbook! ;)

I had to wait to take pictures of the quilt until my family went for our annual beach day in honor of my dad's birthday (he hates the beach :) ). Ironically, today, 8/20, is the day 3 years ago when Mike proposed to me on the same beach... I guess it's meant to be that I'm posting this today (I really didn't realize that until now!).

 2010 - see the ring? :D

 2013

 2010

 By the way, if you haven't met her before - this is my sister Ris, and she helps me with all of my quilty photoshoots! She's a ham, isn't she?

 If you've read this far, thank you! Thanks for letting me tell the (lengthy) story of my quilt. And thanks for all of the support through making this quilt, and through every quilt. :)

13 quilts!!! from Textile House

So I love love love this story!!  Sand from Textile House is an avid quilter and reader...and recently saw her daughter and only child get married.  Her daughter had an amazing idea that she saw through...it involved showcasing 13 quilts on her wedding day.  This is a story you just have to read (and such a great tradition!).


I'll share that my daughter (see previous post) is a quilter. And because she is a quilter, part of her wedding planning was to complete 13 quilts to celebrate the quilter she has become.

The idea of the 13 quilts stems from the dowry quilts our pioneer women would complete before they were married.

"All young ladies were expected to marry shortly after their education, possessing a dowry of quilts, usually thirteen—a baker's dozen. Twelve quilt tops were to be finished before her engagement."

"When a woman was pledged to marry, the thirteenth quilt—called the Bride's or Wedding Quilt—was designed and quilted."

From: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/parkin22.html
It was said that making the 13 quilts would allow the girls to improve on their skills and prepare them for marriage. It also allowed them to bring something to the marriage, in a time when there was very little to spare. With 13 quilts the brides would start life with one quilt for each month of the year, plus a special Wedding quilt.

Shortly after her engagement my daughter, Nyshma, decided to complete a quilt dowry. A lofty goal for someone that had never completed a quilt on her own. She felt comfortable with the sewing machine and had made a few quilt blocks here and there, but making a full quilt from start to finish was never achieved. That first year she came home for Christmas and worked on her first quilt.

A for Andrea (Original pattern by Camille Roskelley)

She learned the basics on this project including raw edge applique.

Next came Stashbuster from a back issue of American Patchwork and Quilting

(sorry don't recall the exact issue and designer at this time)

This one was the most complex quilt she had attempted at that time. She showed some serious organizational skills here. I only gave a few pointers on how to piece on an angle (the bunny ear thing) but didn't touch this one at all.

I think after that one she wanted to make sure Ryan got a quilt to keep him warm while he was finishing his degree in Rochester, NY.

She decided on a very masculine quilt from a book that we picked up from the library. For this she learned to work with big whole cloth pieces. Cutting large pieces of cloth which at times is very awkward.

I loved the next one! I am a huge buggy barn fan but the truth is that I had not been able to figure out the whole stack and slash thing that the most appealing patterns use. I have about 4 or 5 of their books but I never had made one quilt. For this one, the student became the teacher. She threw herself into the project and became an expert!

Hospitality from Buggy Barn's Certifiably Crazy

At this point I was able to convince her to join me on my yearly retreat with the Dallas quilt guild. She was the talk of the retreat because a) she was the youngest attendee and b) she had a very modern looking quilt and was breezing right through it.

Wild Things (pattern by Camille Roskelley)

She put 3 distinct borders on Wild Things and was ready to never put another border on a quilt for the rest of her quilting ventures! LOL!

That is why she altered the Piece of Cake pattern by Camille Roskelley from a lap quilt to a baby quilt. She just did not want to deal with adding borders to the piece! LOL!

Piece of Life was made using Make Life by Sweetwater for Moda

The last quilt she finished in Texas was named The Green Monster. She wanted to make a wonky nine patch but her blocks ended up a bit bigger than she expected. Then the quilt decided that it needed a border and it grew... and grew... and grew...

The Green Monster with all it's borders!

At this point Nyshma was flying solo and was feeling fairly confident. She was ready for a challenge. Shiloh by Bonnie Blue Quilts was selected and she learned to making flying geese with the help of Monique Dillard's Fit to be Geese Ruler. It was at this time that she moved to NH and she was unable to finish the quilt since I, bad mother that I am, did not 'lend' her my rulers. I know! I was EVIL. I just envisioned the 'Let me Borrow it' becoming 'Sorry, you will never see them again'.

Not to dispare, because I bought her a set of her own the rulers (big and small) for Christmas and, as time started ticking off this past summer, Shiloh was completed. This is my favorite of all! And, I got to be the first to cuddle under it while I bound it before the wedding!!

While Shiloh waited to be finished there was time for some simplicity and Nyshma found it inRachel Griffith's postage stamp quilt along.

Sunkissed Stamps became quilt #9.

And as if on a roll, thanks to T-Brenda who wanted a demo of the buggy barn method,

quilt #10 was started soon after.

House of Stars from Buggy Barn's Star Crossing

We are getting down to the wire here...
I had requested to make quilt #13 (yes, I'll come back to 11 & 12 shortly), which was the wedding quilt. Nyshma selected Bali Wedding Star as the pattern and I started working on it... and then stopped. Call it lack of enthusiasm, loss love, what ever you want, but I could not finsh that quilt. BUT, I had finished another quilt that I thought would fit right in and I brought it to the table as a substitute.

Nyshma accepted Beth as her Wedding quilt until I complete Bali Wedding Stars.

If you have been paying close attention you know that we have 11 quilts accounted for, but you might not realize that most of them are still just tops.

With the big day fast approaching and time becoming precious, Nyshma reached out to Margaret (Mainely Quilts of Love) who had recently completed the quilting on Beth, and who had quilted almost everything Nysh has ever made, to see if she could, possibly, take 5-6 tops to be quilted before the wedding. Margaret must have known how much this project meant to my daughter because she stepped up to bat on this one and agreed to do it.

At 4 weeks away from the wedding, I finally convince Dre to allow me to take one of the two quilts left to make, off her plate.

She wanted to make a companion quilt to the piece she made for her fiancee, Ryan. For it to compliment the earlier quilt she wanted to use the left over batik from that quilt. So, she put the fabric in the mail and selected a pattern from Kim Diehl's book Simple Comfort called Twilight Hopskotch. It arrived just in time for me to take to a retreat I was planning to attend and I start piecing immediately.

When I was close to finishing, I emailed Margaret who had just finished the other quilts and crossed my fingers. We were 3 weeks away from the wedding and the top had to travel from Texas to Maine. She told me that she was going on vacation the following week and was leaving on Thursday... BUT... if I got the quilt to her house by Tuesday she would do it before she left. Can you believe it??
An express mail package left my house to Maine on Saturday, it arrived on Monday and Nyshma had quilt #11 in her hands that following Saturday.

To compliment the earlier piece called "Ryan's Quilt", this one was named "Dre's Quilt" (Dre comes from AnDREa - her middle name)

We were 2 weeks away from the wedding with one quilt left to complete and 5 quilts in need of binding. Bindings were attached and some were actually bound (thanks T-Brenda!), but unfortunately, quilt #12 was not completed in time for the wedding.

Family Homecoming (pattern from the book Simplify by Camile Roskelley) was cut, and many of it's blocks pieced, but as the house began to fill with family and friends, the sound of the sewing machine was silenced.

The night before the wedding, as we packed the quilts and prepared to load the car, Nyshma decided to chose a quilt with sufficient emotional value to stand in for that last wedding quilt.

She selected the first quilt I made for her. I was just learning to quilt myself (I'm a first generation quilter - self taught) and she was about 9 years old. Over the years, this quilt has been well loved. It traveled with her to college and now, with a home of her own, it rests on the arm of the sofa in her living room.

First Star made a good stand in for quilt #12.

On the day of her wedding, while friends laughed and danced and saluted the couple,

13 quilts were displayed. Standing as testament to the determination of a new quilter.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo. The Venue was very dark.

Thank you, Margaret for your exceptional work and for helping make this dream come true for Nyshma!

Handmade Retro's Double Wedding Ring Quilt!

Today's feature is from Kristy of Handmade Retro...and it is so beautiful!!  I love when we get a great quilt with an even better story!!  She thought out every bit of this project and it is so thoughtful.  Kristy is part of Sew Australia, a great bee with some fun photos to look through and for them she recently shared this great tutorial.  Also she had her first recipe on Moda Bake Shop this summer, can't wait to try it!

It is finished - and I couldn't be more pleased with how it has turned out. 

First a little explanation about the recipients which will make some of the details about the quilt make more sense. The quilt is for my brother, Justin and his wife since last November, Amy. And yes, I realise that makes this a very late wedding present. Amy's blog documenting the planning of their wedding was called Polka Dots and Sunshine, she wore a dress with small dots on the overdress fabric and the flowers at the wedding were yellow. Justin's favourite colour is green. They married in a garden in the foothills of Perth and marked the aisle with handmade pinwheels from scrapbooking paper.

The quilt measures 55" by 65" and is 4 rings by 5 rings making the quilt a lap size. It is the size I had planned from the beginning to be used on the couch or at the end of the bed but if I had several more months I might have gone for a bed size as the piecing is time consuming and, at time tedious, but once I got the hand of it it turned out not to be so hard.

I didn't use a 'pattern' as such but cut everything using templates from Matilda's Own, the set I bought coming with a handy book detiling fabric requirements for different quilt sizes as well as some very detailed and helpul piecing directions and the template designs to square off the edges. The holes in the templates to mark seam intersections was also VERY helpful.

So to the fabric choices and placement. The intersecting squares bringing the rings together were the two colours that represtented Justin and Amy, the green and the yellow. The other prints in the rings included a number of spots as a nod to the wedding's 'shape' theme as well as some other prints to balance these out.

The backing fabric was chosen as a contrast to the front, stripes and spots but the print could have been a little overwhealing without being split. The double pinwheel blocks down the centre is reminicinet of the aisle at their wedding ceremony which was marked by homemade pinwheels made using scrapbook paper.

I echo quilted the rings on my machine. I love the way it looks but it took a lot longer than I thought and really took a lot out of my neck and shoulders. I enjoy quilting all my own quilts but the basic domestic machines certainly have their limits.

Of course it is labelled on the back - the quote is one that came to Amy when planning ceremony readings for the wedding but didn't feel is appropriate to include in the ceremony itself. And of course their names and the wedding date. On the way home with them tomorrow.

Other Posts about this quilt

A Project (with a capital P)

HandmadeRetro: Double Wedding Ring Progress (or procrastination)

HandmadeRetro: A deep breath....and start - The Double Wedding ...

Arc, Melons and Centres - The Double Wedding Ring quilt

A curvy Weekend

The Girl Who Quilts cute gift quilt...

QuiltyGirl from "The Girl Who Quilts" made this darling quilt for her step brother. Be sure to see her blog, she has some great tutorials, I like her straight line quilting on a short arm tutorial. These are her Scrap projects, love these! Make sure to check her out and say "Hi!"

This is a new finish, and one that I'm especially proud of. My step brother recently got married in Phoenix, AZ. As soon as I found out that he was engaged, I starting thinking about quilt designs. I initially thought of using some cute camper fabric to make him and his (now) wife a quilt to keep in their vintage Streamline  camper. But it seemed too kitschy for them, so at the last minute I decided on a color stack of Aviary 2 by Joel Dewberry.

I had less than a month to make the quilt, plus pack up our house for a cross-country move! So I quickly got started on the design, even before the fabric arrived.

My first thought was to make a square-in-a-square quilt, as the set of solids and prints work well for that design. But then my mind drifted to a brick layout. Soon I had combined the two ideas, only to realize that 10 fat quarters were not going to stretch very far. That's when I started to envision a brick path, with solid on either side. What better style for a wedding quilt, than a path?!?

And that is how "What Lies Ahead" was born!
(The quilt is wrinkled and wonky in the photos because it was packed in my luggage for nearly a week before I shot these pics.)

 The solids are Free Spirit solids. Having only worked with Kona solids in the past, I was excited to give these a try. I really liked working with them! I love the almost dusty appearance in the coloring, and they are very soft.

 I intended to use the cream solid for the background, but I couldn't find enough yardage online. I ended up using the Camel color, and I'm really glad that I did.

 For quilting, I went with simple straight lines using a thread that matched the Camel solid almost perfectly. (Total coincidence, that's what I had on hand!)

 Gifting a quilt always makes me nervous, and this was no exception. I had never been to Phoenix before the wedding, nor did I know what my step brother's town home was like. Had I known much about the culture or his home, I don't think I would have considered gifting a quilt! The Phoenix area doesn't seem to have embraced handmade goodness like other parts of the country, and my step brother's house is very modern.

I'm happy to say that they loved the quilt, though! They even commented that it looked like something straight out of Anthropologie. That I will take as a compliment. ;)