Ta daaaa!

At last I can share with you the finished quilt I made as a gift for my brother and his wife to celebrate their marriage.

I’ve been going on about it since January, it felt all consuming, it really was my main focus for almost 4 months so please excuse my excitement at finally showing you the finished quilt.

There are posts about it here, here, here, here, and here.  Like I said I did go on about it!

Any way the other weekend the newly weds visited so I was able to hand over the quilt, I hadn’t wanted to share photo’s before as Imogen said she wanted to see it for real first.

We had taken it to the beach with us at the beginning of April for a photo shoot:

I quilted approximately 1/4″ either side of each seam line, it’s a big quilt and really quite heavy so there was no way I was going to attempt anything fancy!  You can see the quilting here:

I ordered extra fabric for the binding as I’d decided I didn’t want it scrappy:

It was a big quilt to photograph:

I wanted to make this extra special so decided to paper piece their names and the date of the wedding in to the back.  I used Quiet Play’s Just My Type Uppercase, Lowercase and Numbers and Punctuation patterns (available in her Craftsy store).  Originally I was going to use a mix of fabrics for the text but I’m glad I didn’t, some of the prints have quite a bit of white in them and I think that the text might not have been so clear:

I ordered 2 metres of the backing fabric which is extra wide at 108″ and had just enough for the paper piecing back ground and the backing. Quilt maths is often tricky but it’s great when you get it right and have little fabric left.

All rolled up and ready to gift:

So did they like it? Oh yes (phew), David even said it was worth getting married for! I’m assuming that it isn’t the only good thing about getting married!

Quilt Stats:

Pattern – adaptation of Gaggle of Geese by Jeni Baker in Issue 3 of Love Patchwork and Quilting
Fabrics – Tule by Leah Duncan (I used some of every print) which I bought specifially for this.  Also a few prints from Quilt Blocks by Ellen Luckett Baker, Pearl Bracelets by Lizzy House and some solids and spots from my stash. Background of geese is Kona Snow
Binding – Windmarks in Mirage from Tule
Backing – Widescreen – Grey by Carolyn Friedlander
Wadding – Super-Soft 70/30 Eco-Blend by Sew Simple
Quilting – 1/4 both sides of every block
Size – Approx 80″ x 90″