I've said that I'm a quilter but you wouldn't know it from anything I've posted to date! Well, that's all going to change right now. About four years ago I was having lunch with a wonderful friend, talking about life and whatnot, and I must have mentioned that I wanted to do something completely different. Now, my friend is a fantastic quilter, and we just happened to be in our local coffee shop that happened to be having an exhibition of quilts, and so she said, why not make a quilt!! This was about 6 months before my daughter was going to be married so I thought, why not make them a wedding quilt present? (Foolish woman!) So we spent many wonderful hours pouring over quilt books for the perfect pattern, shopping for the perfect fabric, and so the saga of the wedding quilt began.
Now, you'd think that I'd be posting pictures of the wedding quilt, wouldn't you? Well, no. I'm jumping ahead a bit here. In the process of making this quilt I met a friend of friend #1, who shall now be called friend #2, and we started gathering at each other's house once a month to work on our respective projects. Long story short: we decided to make a friendship quilt together. We would each end up with our own quilt. We selected the pattern collectively, although I think #2 brought the pattern to us. #1 and #2 both have been quilting for a long time and have built up a considerable stash so I had to start building up my own stash (a dirty job but SOMEBODY's got to do it :) ) and thus began the friendship quilt.
We decided early on that we would use only reproduction fabrics, preferably from the Civil War era, maybe a little before and a little after. We would each make three of the particular bloc, keeping one and sharing the other two. We each chose a different fabric for the shashing between the blocs, and a different backing. Each quilt is assembled according to the whims and preferences of the maker, and each quilt is so beautiful. The elements are all alike, with the exception of one unique bloc in each quilt, but they all look SO different! We are all handquilting using the Bishop's fan pattern.
#1 finished her quilt a while ago as she needed a finished product for the class she was teaching, and #2, a fantastic quilter also, is pretty far along with hers also. Me, I'm lagging behind a bit because I wanted to have at least half of the wedding quilt quilted before I began this one. So, here is the friendship quilt. I hope that I'll be able to share pictures of all three quilts later.
Now, you'd think that I'd be posting pictures of the wedding quilt, wouldn't you? Well, no. I'm jumping ahead a bit here. In the process of making this quilt I met a friend of friend #1, who shall now be called friend #2, and we started gathering at each other's house once a month to work on our respective projects. Long story short: we decided to make a friendship quilt together. We would each end up with our own quilt. We selected the pattern collectively, although I think #2 brought the pattern to us. #1 and #2 both have been quilting for a long time and have built up a considerable stash so I had to start building up my own stash (a dirty job but SOMEBODY's got to do it :) ) and thus began the friendship quilt.
We decided early on that we would use only reproduction fabrics, preferably from the Civil War era, maybe a little before and a little after. We would each make three of the particular bloc, keeping one and sharing the other two. We each chose a different fabric for the shashing between the blocs, and a different backing. Each quilt is assembled according to the whims and preferences of the maker, and each quilt is so beautiful. The elements are all alike, with the exception of one unique bloc in each quilt, but they all look SO different! We are all handquilting using the Bishop's fan pattern.
#1 finished her quilt a while ago as she needed a finished product for the class she was teaching, and #2, a fantastic quilter also, is pretty far along with hers also. Me, I'm lagging behind a bit because I wanted to have at least half of the wedding quilt quilted before I began this one. So, here is the friendship quilt. I hope that I'll be able to share pictures of all three quilts later.
Front of friendship quilt, with basting intact.
Quilt backing.
Bishop's fan hand quilting.
