The Bride's Quilt: a contemporary take

Since my sister’s wedding shower in May, I have been working on a quilt for her.

At her shower, all the guests were asked (okay, instructed) to decorate a white fabric square that we provided with their wishes for my sister as she starts this new chapter in her life. We threw in ribbon and rosettes and appliques and markers and paints and all that sort of thing to give people something to work with.

It’s our modern spin on a traditional wedding gift during colonial times, where family and friends of the intended bride would come together to make a quilt for her. With each one constructing a block, many hands made fast work and soon they had enough blocks to piece together the quilt top. Many times they initialed their work in the corner of their block.

This is an example of what people came up with:

So all the quilt squares have been gathered together (stupidly I still have to make mine), and now I am starting to sew them into rows, then I'll sew all the rows together and start working on the binding.

I’m doing the Around the World pattern, which you can modify pretty easily according to what you want to do.  The inner diamond will have the squares of mothers and grandmothers and aunts, the outer diamond will have the squares of more family and friends. The corners of the quilt and tips of the diamonds will have the squares of bridesmaids.  

I’ve been going fast a furious on this thing, checking my math and periodically laying out the rows to make sure I don't have two decorated fabric squares that look too similar lying too close to each other.

I'm working off this diagram I did up for myself, using it for planning where everything will go, notes about the next steps I need to take,  and early on for all the math I had to do to see how much fabric of each color I would need. I don't have much left over at all, meaning my math was exceptional (!!) 

The center square (25 on the diagram) is pink with a heart containing the fabric of my wedding dress, my mom’s wedding dress and now, my sister’s. Its always nice to incorporate something like that, its one of the bonuses when you do things yourself - you can do it your way completely. When all is said and done it will measure roughly 7 feet square. Here's a look at how its shaping up.

 Its been a long road for me, getting my sister married; coralling her friends together for the spa / casino bachelorette weekend, then losing a few G's at the blackjack table, flying into New York 20 times in the last month, dipping into bloomies the day before the shower to find the registry nearly wiped clean…woof. I still have to write my maid of honor speech and now I’m on sewing detail everyday after work...But hey, can you ask for anything more?