A Royal Wedding Gift
The Royal Wedding this weekend reminds me of a special wedding request that deserves a journal entry.
The story begins in 1970 when two girls meet at school and become friends. 47 years later one of the girls has a millennial daughter marrying and she asks her mom for a handmade quilt. The one friend has just decided to long arm and Order #1 is received from the friend who trusts and believes in her! {By the way, no idea how this much time has passed, I'm pretty sure we're only 35 ;-) }
The bride chose a pinwheel pattern that used interesting borders and a pieced binding to really make it a stunning quilt. The pinwheel block has a long history and appears in many American quilts dating from the early 1800’s, so I loved the bride going traditional. However, she chose Rifle Paper Company’s fabric line and managed to narrow it down to seven fabrics which are shown below. I love when tradition meets modern!!
As with any quilt I make, the fabric is washed to prevent shrinkage after it's sewn and ensure the fabrics don't bleed on each other. What does 11 yards needed for blocks, binding, and back look like when it's waiting to be ironed? See below!
This pattern required 154 pinwheel blocks and below the top is beginning to come together. The design wall was used to make sure there was good contrast and no similar blocks placed next to each other. Due to the small size of the blocks and weight as the top was pieced, the floor was used to lay it out as the rows were sewn together.
Each block has 8 pieces to make one pinwheel, so if my math is correct, that's 1,232 pieces to join.
After the top is finished, it’s time to find the right quilt pattern. The photo below shows the darling quilt pattern which was done as an edge to edge, but you can also see the border and binding. Having the borders and binding pieced took longer than just making a border or binding from one fabric, but the randomness of the fabric really complimented the pinwheels. I wouldn’t do this pattern any other way.
There are 109,035 stitches quilted in this beauty.
While I sewed, a lot of good music was played and prayers offered for this young couple. The photos don’t do the quilt justice! The crisp white against the bright colours of the Rifle fabric with a perfect quilt pattern resulted in a beautiful quilt.
One last photo before it was delivered to Texas.
This was a pleasure to sew from start to finish and it wasn’t a Royal Pain at all. In fact, if I'm honest, hard to let this one go.
It wasn't until it was given as a shower gift I found out it is a tradition in their family for mother to give daughter a quilt. What an honour to be asked to be a part of it! Thank you for taking a chance on a new (small) business. We wish the newlyweds many years of happiness!!