And one more quilt...(for now)

Remember that time when I said "you have a year"? Well, here I am again, a few months late (again).

This quilt is a wedding gift for my brother and his wife, who were married last November (ahem, 2013). My brother is a pretty reserved, solid, dark color kind of guy, and his wife is, well, a little more into bright colors. So, I thought the color scheme of varied bright greens, on a pale grey background would play well towards both of their tastes.

I found this pattern, called Bear Paw, in an old quilt book that was gifted to me years ago by an old family friend who used to be an amazing quilter, but was no longer able to because of her arthritis. When I began thinking about making a quilt for them, I somehow came across this pattern and was set on it.

It is by far the most complicated and detailed quilt pattern I have ever followed. The hundreds of tiny triangles, hell, even just the triangles period, required many many hours of cutting and measuring and sewing. Poor Jared had to endure days and days of "hey! I made two triangles into a square!" and then "I made two squares into a rectangle!" and so on and so on. Luckily he's a very good sport about these sorts of things. As complex as this pattern was, and as many months as it took me to piece it all together, the slow and steady construction and seeing it all come together finally was amazingly exciting and satisfying.

And then, the quilting. Oh, the quilting. I brought the finished top into our local quilting store when I was ready to buy some fabric for the back and after I picked something out, I casually asked the woman for some advice on how to quilt it. She casually replied "well, you could just stitch in the ditch and trace the pattern." Oh sure, no problem. And from there ensued many many hours of quilting. Again, the most detailed and complex quilting I have ever attempted. Not to mention the fact that this throw sized quilt just barely fit through my small sewing machine, making exact stitching in the ditch more than a little challenging. I used light grey thread for the quilting, which blended in with the main front fabric and added a nice contrast on the back.

So there you have it. Just over a year after their wedding date, it is finally completed and settling into their home in California. After all of that cutting and piecing and quilting, I have to admit that it was a little hard to part with this one. But I'm so happy to know that it will have a good home with the two of them.

Details: Almost all of the greens were scraps from my stash, many of which were leftover from that first wedding quilt I made many moons ago. The grey on the front is Kona Ash and the backing and binding is Kona Graphite (or possibly Shale or Steel...whoops, forgot to write that down!). I of course also forgot to measure this quilt before excitedly packing it up to head to its new home, but it's about 50"x65". A generous throw size, with plenty of room for the "newlyweds" to snuggle up together on the couch...