A Wedding on the Way!

There's a wedding on the way in our family!! Can you sense the excitement here? Our son G, and his bride-to-be, C will be married this coming fall. Of course, there has to be a quilt made for the soon to be established new family :o)

Knowing the young bride it was easy to select fabrics. She is drawn to earth colors, and things that have a bit of sparkle and shine to them. Can you imagine fabrics more perfect than Shimmer by Jennifer Sampou? The fabrics are made in Japan and come in beautiful shades of blue, gray, taupe, and creams. Each contain a shimmer of silver, gold, or both. Since I'm a bit late to the Shimmer rollout we'll happily go with a mix of Shimmer, Shimmer 2, and Shimmer On :o)

Half yard cuts from Shimmer, Shimmer 2, and Shimmer On

Because of the metallic ink used on these fabrics they are a bit less drapy than regular quilting cottons, but I think in a large lap quilt with fluffy batting and a flannel backing they will lend a nice substance to the quilt. I was able to find a nice assortment of these fabrics on Etsy.

It's difficult to show the lovely metallic in a photograph 

Although the fabrics quickly made themselves evident to me I was initially unsure of what pattern to use. I narrowed my thoughts down to three ideas which I showed the bride and groom. (Although it is tempting to make the quilt as a surprise I really feel that with something requiring this much time I'd prefer to make sure I am creating something that matches their tastes.) Here are the three ideas I came up with for them to preview. First up was the wonderfully modern Octagon Shimmer quilt designed by Jennifer Sampou to go with her fabric line. Obviously this would be a great choice since it was designed especially for these fabrics. Next I pitched the idea of a triangle quilt like this one. I've wanted to make a triangle quilt for some time now and have had this QAL bookmarked on my computer. I think these fabrics would be great in a triangle quilt! Then, to round things out I added in a more traditional quilt design, the Dreamcatcher pattern by Denyse Russart - really a beautiful quilt!

A bit to my surprise the traditional style Dreamcatcher quilt turned out to be their favorite. I almost jumped right in and bought the pattern, but then got to looking at it and thinking...it looks very similar to my Boxed Star quilt block that I designed for Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, Volume 15.

Boxed Star quilt block designed by me :o)

How fun it would be to have a reason to make a quilt using one of my very own designs! In the magazine each of the blocks must be 12" square. However, I am going to resize my block up to 18" square and go with a 4 x 4 layout. This will allow for a generous 72" square quilt - a good size for cuddling on the couch.

Mock-up of 12" Boxed Star blocks

In my previous post I shared this mock-up of a quilt top using the Boxed Star block. I was thrilled to see the secondary design made by the boxes and squares of blue since secondary design was what I was hoping to achieve. However, I don't want those boxes and squares to be quite as prominent in this wedding quilt, so I'm going to try making them with a lighter contrasting color. That way they will be a completely separate design element from the stars.

I will be combining blue fabrics with the gray and taupe fabrics and each star will be a different combination, thus yielding a more scrappy look to the quilt. (No surprise there, right 😁) As soon as I get a sample block made up I'll be back to share more!

Combinations of blues and gray/taupes

Here's a picture of our sweet couple :o) We can't wait to add C to our family!

Our engaged couple!

Hope you are somewhere warm! It's a cold, windy January day here. Happy sewing!