Willow Grove Photography
Hubby and I celebrate our wedding anniversary this month. Maybe it’s the anticipation of this anniversary, or maybe it’s the desire to finally GET ON IT when it comes to all the projects I have unfinished around the house, but I have been working on our wedding quilt lately.
Willow Grove Photography
Wait. Let me back up a sec and start from the beginning. Most of our wedding was hand-crafted by me. I made the wedding programs, which doubled as fans for our outdoor wedding. And tripled as flags for the guests to wave after the ceremony.
Willow Grove Photography
I made the wedding “flowers”, including my bouquet, the maid-of-honor’s clutch and corsage, the flower girl’s headbands, and the groom’s/best man’s boutonnieres.
Willow Grove Photography
I made the groovy buffet food (with a lot of help from friends/family), the chocolate-covered strawberry truffle groom’s cake, and the cupcake tower for the coconut cupcakes. By the way, my friend Beth made the cupcakes, and she deserves a huge shout-out. BEST COCONUT CAKE EVER!
Willow Grove Photography
I made the ice breaker table game for the guests…okay, you get it. I made a lot of stuff for our wedding. And I loved every minute of it. Yes, it was a lot to do. But I had a deadline…and boy, did that help a procrastinator like me.
Willow Grove Photography
Anyway, you can catch another (small) glimpse of the table runners that I made in the background of the shot above. We rented the typical round tables and white tablecloths for our outdoor wedding reception, but wanted to add some tiki vibe with the centerpieces and table runners. My inspiration for the table runners was a Better Homes and Gardens table runner made from napkins. It reminded me so much of a patchwork quilt, that I was inspired to create my own table runner with fabric. And then make it into our wedding quilt. Fun, right?
I bought several 1960’s inspired cotton fabrics — some tiki, some rockabilly — and labeled the patterns A-I. I then used Microsoft Excel (my go-to design tool) to create a pattern using the fabrics for four runners. I needed a total of eight for the reception tables, so I just repeated the design again.
The unit of measure is square inches, and is depicted with the light-blue outlined squares. Once I doubled the runner patterns above, I could determine the cuts that I needed to make for each fabric. Using the diagram below as a guide, I got busy with my rotary cutter.
After cutting all the pieces, I first sewed them together in 6-inch square blocks. I then joined the blocks to make one long runner. I used iron-on interface to make the runners more sturdy and to help keep the seams pressed down…and intact…during the reception. My idea, if it works, is to use the adhesive properties of the interface to my advantage. I plan to machine quilt, and I usually have trouble with my batting and backing shifting. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can just iron the batting directly to the quilt top to help it stay put.
Not that iron-on interface photographs well. But it may be the solution to all my quilting problems. I’ll let you know how it goes in Wedding Quilt: Part II. Until then, here’s a sneak peak of what’s to come.
Linking to these wonderful blogs: Homework, The Winthrop Chronicles, and The Vintage Farmhouse. Check ’em out!
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