Wedding Quilt

I'm not sure if I’ve mentioned in the past that I volunteered to quilt a wedding quilt for my husband's best friend’s oldest daughters wedding…. did I?

So here's the story:  The youngest daughter, DD2, approached me to find out information about making a quilt for her sister's (DD1) upcoming wedding at the end of September.  Since I was going to make my own quilt, I thought that it would work well to simply quilt her quilt as our wedding gift.

The catch is that DD2 has never made a quilt before, and she wanted to make a King sized quilt!  I am never one to discourage such ambition, especially since I did the very same thing.  We discussed patterns and she eventually picked one called True Lover’s Knot, which is much like a Log Cabin.  Since many people start on those as first patterns I told her that would be just fine.  Personally, I think sewing the narrow strips is much more difficult than the larger strips.

I told DD2 that she needed to get me the quilt before the end of July because I would be starting school in the middle of August, as well as to account for any possible delays.  With the help of her mom, she did just that, arriving this weekend from out-of-state with her dad and the quilt in tow.  Her mom however had run out of time to attach the borders and asked me if I could do that as well.  I agreed, as long as she sent me the border fabric washed and ready to go.

There were a couple of problems, however.  First, the border fabric was not the same solid color that was used in the top, and it did not enhance the top in any way.  Secondly, several of the seams needed to be picked out and re-sewn.  So, Friday afternoon off we went to Quilt Expressions, where Karen H. helped DD2 pick new border fabric and came up with a unique solution for the inner border.  We got it into the wash, inspected the quilt for areas that needed to be fixed, started fixing them, and then ironed the new fabric on Saturday.

We had decided to go floating the Boise River Saturday afternoon and we did just that.  No need to have me stay home and quilt while everyone else is off having fun in the sun, right?  I ended up with a pretty intense sunburn on my legs, from my thighs to my ankles!  We also had planned a barbecue for that evening and we had a great time with mutual friends who had recently moved to Boise as well.  We had tons of food and I ate way too much!

Dad and DD2 left early Sunday morning, as she needed to get back to work by Monday.

I spent all of yesterday afternoon fixing additional seams that I found that needed to be re-sewn, and in the evening eventually got the borders added to the quilt.

Today, I will finish getting the quilt loaded and start the quilting.  Optimistically, given the quilting pattern we selected, the quilting should only take about three hours if each row could be accomplished in 15 minutes.   However, I am not fast nor am I optimistic, and it will probably end up taking me the entire day.

So, I better get started!