the gift

A little while ago, I had alluded to a top secret project that I'd been working on over the summer. I wasn't able to share it here until now, as it was the present I was making for the wedding I attended this past weekend. The wedding was of one of my college roommates. An amazing woman, who I only befriended in my last months at school, and I am so grateful that I did. That last semester before my graduation, I had the joy of living in an incredible Vermont country house with three incredible ladies (plus one frequent visitor from Northern NY state...). That house was full of laughter, hard work, new friendships, delicious food, lots of cuddling, important life conversations, and loads of fun. Oh yeah, and it was beautiful as heck.

When my friend got engaged last year, the other four of us knew we wanted to do some collaborative gift for her. Of course, we wanted it to be handmade, but the four of us literally live almost as far apart as we could get from each other: Oregon, Minnesota, Vermont, and New Orleans. Not the best setup for a collaborative handmade gift. So we brainstormed, and came up with an idea that I'm really proud of. Meet the mini-quilt.

I used a photo that I took of our house back in the fall of 2004 (during the peak of the Vermont fall colors) and printed it onto Crafter's Image Photo Fabric. I used this as the central piece and also as the inspiration for the rest of the fabrics in the quilt. I'm proud to say that all of the fabrics (including the photo fabric, actually) that I used for this project were from the stash.

I wasn't exactly sure where this project was going to go, since I kind of worked it out as I went. This might explain why it turned out just a bit wonky. I did solicit some assistance from the nice quilting ladies over at Glad Creations Quilt Block, who were ridiculously excited when I walked in saying "I'm a new quilter" and asking for advice. They were very helpful. I machine quilted the whole thing, which made me realize that I don't think my Singer 5050C was built for free motion quilting (it may be time to figure out what this walking foot thing is). It would have been nice to hand quilt it, but I was running low on time (and I did need time to make that dress, which, incidentally, was a total hit). I did do the binding by hand though, which was a nice way to finish off this project that was so full of love.

It was such a joy to present this gift to my friend on her wedding day and I can only hope that she'll cherish it in her home as much as I cherished making it for her (there is, after all, a sleeve on the back to allow for wall hanging-and I'm expecting it to be prominently displayed in their home!).