Alison's Wedding Quilt - Part 4: The Reveal!

I am so excited to be able to show you all the first quilt completed here on the Quilt List, my dear friend Alison's wedding quilt.  It is a Trip Around the World pattern, made from 10 jewel tone fabrics and measures 62" square.  For information about the fabrics, scroll down a few posts...

And now, onto the pictures!  For larger views, click on the individual pictures. 

On my porch swing.

Being Kentucky, there are plenty of pretty white fences around.  This one just happens to be my neighbor's fence.

The majority of the quilt is quilted in a crazy free-motion swirly motif, by the center square is done in 4 heart motif.

This is the clearest picture, hanging up in my bedroom.

And for all those friends in Grad School who used to tease me when I was forced to do monochromatic shows, here's the quilt in sepia...

Teasers: Alison's Quilt Update & Upcoming Project

I've *nearly* completed the binding on this one...  just a few feet of hand sewing left, and it will be ready to wrap up and ship.  Not too bad, considering the wedding is in 29 days!

Here are some teaser pictures today, featuring the free motion quilting.

In other news, I've been working a bit on a mini-art quilt, for a swap on Craftster.org.  I'm so lucky because I get to swap with a great friend (not to mention my only follower on this blog!) in this round.  The rules state that the art quilt must be no bigger than 24" x 24", and must be shipped out by September 7th.  Eeek!  It can include traditional piecing, applique, embroidery, beading, charms and other 3D embellishments.  So far I have my front completed.  And while tossing and turning last night I decided how I'm going to quilt it!  More to come...

Alison's Wedding Quilt - Part 3

After picking out fabrics for the fabrics in the quilt, I rendered it in Photoshop, to make sure my choices would work well together.  I'm pretty happy with the color blending, and the nice round number of 10 fabrics. 

The best part about the Trip Around the World pattern?  Because it's a strip quilt the top goes together REALLY fast!  I got the strips all cut out in an hour, and pieced in another.

The loops were pressed and cut down in another hour or so... Here they are all laid out ready to be pieced:

And 1 of the 4 quarter sections all pieced:

And here it is laid out on the floor, so you can see how the blocks go together.  Have I mentioned that I love how quickly this pattern goes together?

Alison's Wedding Quilt - Part 2

In the previous post I told you about the inspiration behind Alison & Dan's wedding quilt.  Here I'm going to give you a little more information on the fabrics.

I knew I wanted each fabric to be a reference to a location or environment.  I also wanted to use a great deal of vibrant colors.  I spent hours on eQuilter.com, using their Design Wall to play with the layout.  Picking and choosing until I felt like I had something from all the major types of landscape, a good range of color, and something to represent where each of us comes from.  Here's the layout I created with the Design Wall tool:

Click on the bar to see a larger version.

All the fabrics laid out on my table.

I've included links to the specific fabrics, in case you are curious about them:
 
Purple - Migrating Cranes for Alison's thesis, which centered on Japanese clothing.
Arctic Blue - Abstracted Mountains for the icy cold poles that only the bravest travelers visit.
Mallard - Quiet Waters for the tropical islands we imagined running away to during grad school.
Hunter Green - Forrest Dreams for the forests in the Pacific Northwest where they now live.
Leaf Green - Meadow Grass for the Midwestern prairie where Dan grew up.
Saddle Tan - Jazzy Zebra Stripes for Africa, where Dan served in the Peace Corps.
Squash Gold - Forest Ferns for the fall foliage where I grew up in New England.
Cinnamon - Tonal Crackle for the south western desert where Alison grew up.
Wine - Sunset Ginkgo Leaves to represent Asia.
Deep Garnet - Lavish Woodgrain as a solid frame to build their life together.

Tomorrow:  Progress shots of the quilt!

Alison's Wedding Quilt - Part 1

The first quilt that will be completed in the course of this blog is the wedding quilt for my closest friend, Alison, who is getting married in September. But in order to fill you in on Alison's quilt, I'll have to back up...

My husband and I met while I was in graduate school. Alison was one of the other costume design students in my year. We took nearly all the same classes, ate together, did errands together, and stayed up all night doing our design homework together.

During this time I met Jim. We and I fell hard and fast for each other.  He patiently put up with my craziness when I cried about the library not having the books I needed, when I ranted and raved after running out of watercolor paper at 3:00am. By my final year of school we were engaged. Alison helped me plan the wedding and stood beside me as we said our vows. As I was searching for something to be read during our
ceremony I found this poem by Wendy Paris:

 

I want to go everywhere with you. 

I want to go to Italy and Israel and down the street.
I want to lie on a raft under the sun in the South Pacific with you and float and float and float.
I want to go to the tallest building on the highest mountain, in the biggest city.
And I want to go up on the roof with you and look around.
I want us to pool our talents and pool our resources and create together, that which we have not been able to create independently, alone.
And I want you in smaller ways, too, right here, holding my hand and kissing me.

It was perfect. It said everything I felt and thought about Jim. It reminded me of something I had read that Pablo Neruda had said about poetry. As he wrote and spoke in Spanish, I'm paraphrasing the English translation here: He said that poetry was created for everyone, and should be simple. It should not hide behind lofty words. It should melt like pastries on the tongue and be as comfortable as the bed where lovers have slept. Oddly enough Paris wrote the piece as an introduction to her book, Words for the Wedding, but did not intend it to be included in the list of verses.

The poem got me thinking about Alison and her boyfriend Dan. They had met just after Dan had signed up to serve 3 years in the Peace Corps in Africa. I watched how hard it was on them. I thought about how much Alison loved to travel and how many hours we spent together watching the Travel Channel and dreaming of escaping school on a grand adventure.  And while we talked about doing it together, I knew we both thought
about traveling with the men we love. The idea for Alison and Dan's wedding quilt was born then.

Eventually Dan came back to the states, and they got engaged. Time to add my Alison and Dan to the quilt list.