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Friday, August 26, 2011

Antique Wedding Quilt


I have the privilege of working on a beautiful antique quilt that's destined to be a wedding gift next weekend. This amazing quilt is all hand pieced hexagons and diamonds - isn't it gorgeous!! I'm in awe of the time it took this quilter to cut and hand sew each piece!

I put the seam ripper in there so you can get an idea of how small each piece is.

The quilt top was made by the groom's grandmother. A crew of ladies from our congregation sandwiched and hand quilted it with perle cotton. I love the pale pink cotton they picked. My role in this process is to bind the quilt, no simple task since the edge is not straight but scalloped! And not only that, the two long sides are a bump-bump-bump type of scallop, while the short sides are a bump-dip-bump-dip S-shaped wave. Did that make any sense at all??? I'm still figuring out how to measure how many inches of bias strips I will need.

The ladies at fabric.com sent me some samples of Kona Cotton so I could match the green fabric used between the hexagon "flowers." I was so glad to find the color "old leaf" is almost the exact same color. Since there are more than a few seams that are falling apart along the edge of the quit top, I zig-zagged the edge of the top then carefully cut around the scallops. I hope this stabilizes everything while I pin and sew down the binding.

If Hurricane Irene takes out our electricity for a while, I will be busy hand-stitching the binding. Better get the machine stitching done while there's still electricity!!

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