Keeping it Simple

I have a great niece getting married in a month. Oh no! I started talking about making her a wedding quilt 1 1/2 years ago. I researched ideas that I liked, asked for her opinion on some of the quilts I have made in the past, and found My Great Big Fat Wedding Ring Quilt from QuiltSmart. It uses fusible interfacing, big chunks of fabric… I liked the look of it. My friend Sandy Lindal from Scrappy Gal Quilt Com had TWO daughters getting married, so she was joining me on this venture.

We decided to order the bolt ( currently $137- USD) in case we needed or wanted more rings- or another quilt! Ordering this from th eUSA is pricey, especially when you end up paying a LOT for shipping ($36) , and then get charged duty (~$60-) on top of that. So, pricey, but hopefully fast and simple to make.

I have written about my early steps in constructing this quilt here, where I decided to over-dye the blocks I had made to tone down any whites in the fabrics . For some reason, I then put it away for a while. Below is a rough image from EQ8 of what my version was to look like. Sandy showed her quilt at our recent in person quilt guild meeting. She had finished both of them! And they are stunning- hopefully she blogs about hers soon so you can see what I mean. This is a rough image of what it was supposed to look like.

Fast forward to me spending too long searching for my blocks. OK.. problems. I was missing one piece of blue background fabric (did I use it somewhere else??). After a few frustrating days I realized I did NOT want to deal with these problems right now- so back into the UFO category. Now what?

This was the push I needed..the wedding is now just one month away, and I had decided on a whole new quilt. So,I decided to look for a simple, modern design with lots of negative space, a range of colours, still mostly blue. I liked using solids in the Timna Tarr quilt I recently made. I made one block from this purchased pattern ( A Different Stripe by Denise Schmidt), and I like the slight wonkiness, but wanted something simpler, centred around various blues.

So, here is my quilt using the KISS principle- Keep It Simple Stupid! My sister, who lives in Nova Scotia, has a long arm quilting machine, so we decided I would ship it off to her for quilting, making it a gift from both great-aunts. Whew! Hopefully I remember to take a photo before I deliver it to the soon-to-be-married couple.

Off to the post office!

UPDATE: The quilt has been quilted, mailed and received, and our great niece and her husband love it! Photo below is just after quilting is done. Sadly we didn’t take a photo before it got mailed.