I'm working on a wedding quilt for one of my dearest friends (sorry if you're reading this and I'm spoiling the surprise), and this time I worked out a rough sketch of the design to keep me focused. It's not exactly a piece by piece sketch because there are actually additional 9 patch squares forming the large center X of squares. Basically its a 9 patch inside of a 9 patch, inside of a 9 patch - if that's confusing enough for you, then you can understand why I needed a bit of a sketch to get myself started.​

​I think a handmade wedding quilt is one of the the most meaningful gifts you can give a couple. There's such a long standing tradition of wedding quilts created by brides-to-be or by the bride and groom's friends and family as a gift. I love the challenge of making them just about as much as I love making baby quilts, even though they're bigger and require much more commitment to complete. It's really a pleasure to think deeply about a couple's shared style and aesthetic while laboring over several weeks or months to complete an interpretation of their union in fabric.

​Since I've learned how much I love making both of these types of quilts I've decided that I'd love to collaborate with folks to help create custom wedding and baby quilts as gifts for their friends and family. I'll just ask for a little bit of information about the recipient and their favorite colors, decorating style, and taste. Then I'll whip up a design proposal similar to this sketch to make sure that I've got the right thing in mind. Once we agree I'll get to work! I've added some details in my shop for both custom wedding and baby quilts and the required deposits.

​I've finished hand quilting and binding my Little Goose baby quilt. I love that moment of pulling it out of the wash and hanging it up to take a good look. The dusty blue, red and white vintage feed sack print remains to be the real star of this quilt. It's the quilting really that was my concentration for this quilt. Usually I'll quilt repeated lines, shadow the pieced shapes, or when I'm making freehand patterns I usually enjoy stitching curved shapes. Curves had no place in this quilt, so I figured out a way to make the tiny freehand, improvisational triangles.

One of the real things that distinguishes hand quilting from machine quilting is that hand quilting does not require continuous line patterns to be neat and tidy. A pattern like this would never work on the machine, so it was fun to think of the impossibility of stitching the lines any other way as I went along. This stitch pattern particularly relies on the staggering of corners and triangle sizes to preserve the randomness, and so that asterisk shapes do not emerge too frequently in the pattern. It's actually a lot more difficult to be random than you'd think. We all have a natural tendency toward order in making, and even in efforts of randomness like this I still find myself making rules about where the lines can or cannot be stitched.

You can find this quilt available in my shop if your love of triangles matches mine. I hope it will keep some pint sized person very cozy.​

It feels like its been forever since I started quilting this quilt for our bed, but I'm finally more than 2/3 or maybe 3/4 finished. It's officially the largest quilt that I've ever hand quilted, and its only a double.​ I've been adding random areas of red straight line quilting and the occasional navy blue X, not just because it looks good but because it sure does break up my stitching to have a break of straight lines to quilt. All hinting at the tedium of the hand quilting aside, I know this quilt is going to look really amazing with the Amish applique quilt I bought at a Mud Sale back in March. Getting them together finished on the bed is definitely keeping me motivated to keep stitching.

My quilted coasters are back in my brand new shop just in time for iced coffee, lemonade, arnold palmer, sweet tea, and lime rickey season.​ For today only use the code ICE at checkout for 15% off all coaster sets. Get yours before midnight tonight!

I've gathered up another set of scraps for another of my tiny wall quilts. These scraps are particularly tiny, so I'm not sure they'll add up to anything very large.​ I'm curious to see how well I can even hand piece together these bitty pieces. I'm pretty keen on the color palette (its the only reason I saved any scraps this tiny in the first place), and  especially the liberty print that is part of the mix.