For Jamie and Karl

A Wedding Quilt Tale  

 As many of you know, when I learned last March that Karl wanted to propose to Jamie, I decided that I had to learn to quilt so that I could make them a quilt for their wedding. Holy bejesus was this quilt an undertaking for me. First of all, it was the first quilt I had ever made and I choose to make it a queen size quilt so that they could snuggle up in it for years to come. I may have been a bit overzealous, but I learned how to do it and managed to finish the whole thing before their wedding in October.
   When thinking about this quilt I knew a few things in the beginning: a) I didn't have a lot of money to spend on fabric, b) I had very little time in which to finish this quilt, and c) I wanted it to be really meaningful for Jamie and Karl, not necessarily beautiful. So I devised a plan: I would tell everyone who I knew who also knew Jamie and Karl that I was going to make them a quilt and that I was looking for donations in the form of some fabric to include in the quilt and pray to God that none of them told Jamie and Karl what I was up to. Upon receiving the quilt they both claimed that they had no idea what I was up to, but I am not sure I believe them because there were simply SO many people in on it.
    To get started I sent everyone I knew an e-mail, facebook message, text message, post-card or gave them a call to ask for fabric donations. Since I live in Alaska and most of my family (and their family) lives in Minnesota I gave people three options: they could ship the fabric to me in Juneau (which no one did), they could give it to me when I was in MN for a week in June, or they could drop it off at my parents house before my trip to MN in June and I would haul it back to Alaska (thank goodness I get two free bags on Delta). I got mounds of fabric from many different people and of course none of it matched, but all of it was donated with love for the bride and groom. After I got enough fabric from friends and family to make about 12 quilts, I washed it all and decided to start documenting my progress through pictures.

 

 A beautiful shot of most of the fabric I had received after being washed and folded...

    The fabric then sat in a pile in my room for many weeks while I spent my days outside hiking, kayaking, fishing and enjoying the Alaska summer. I thought a lot about what I wanted to do while going on these adventures, and decided that I really wanted to incorporate Jamie and Karl's names and the date of their wedding onto the quilt in someway. A friend suggested embroidering this information on some fabric, but for some reason this seemed too daunting for me as I have never done any embroidering. So I came up with the brilliant plan to construct puzzles of their names and spend hours cutting little squares of fabric to sew together to make their names and the date. Stupid I know now, I have since done a lot of embroidering and it is really not that hard, and way more complicated than it needed to be but hindsight is 20/20 (I will listen better next time Brynn and Nicole). Anyway I came up with my idea and decided to sketch it out...

 

I decided to lay out the information as such. My next decision was a bit harder, did I want to add borders and how did I want to use all the fabric I had been given? It took some thinking, but I eventually decided to do something like this, even though none of the fabric would match...

 

Now that the important things were decided I had to actually start sewing. I knew that I wanted to get those names and the date done with first because there was so much work involved in this. After much math, sketching and many, many drinks I finally figured out the sizes and how to piece the fabric together...

  

I got some graph paper and sketched out how to make Jamie's name using 1 inch squares that I would then sew together to make her name. Each of their names presented unique challenges. The least fun part was probably cutting out two inch squares to sew along a diagonal to make the shapes require for the letters. I started with the J in Jamie's name and worked from their, cutting the fabric and sewing the pieces together as I went instead of cutting it all at once and sewing it all at once.

 

The J came together easy enough but the a and the e in her name were not fun to do. I think I ripped out the stitches to resew it together about 15 times before I was okay with the way they looked (note:they are still to this day far from perfect).  Eventually, I got it done. I think it took me about one whole day to do each name (to which my housemate Kate can attest). 

Jamie's name done and looking good enough for me. I decided to use the same fabric in opposite ways for their names. Karl's name had to be pink, which all who know Karl understand :) Then the next day I sat down with a yummy mango and apple smoothie in the morning to figure out how to do Karl's name.

Luckily, having done Jamie's the day before I had a bit easier time figuring out Karl's name. I then set to cutting and sewing together the fabric to make his name. The K in his name was my least favorite. I had to make sure that they lined up just right, and this took a lot of seam ripping and resewing as my sewing skills were still at a beginner's level. But I finally got it looking acceptable...

I also finished the arl with considerable ease and felt elated that I had finally finished his name too!!

At this point I was fed up with cutting out such small squares and piecing letters together that I decided to get started on the other bits before working on the date. I basically decided to divide the quilt into three pieces that were the full length and then sew them together. I started on a corner, choose fabric, decided on a size, cut it and started sewing it together. 

I started on Jamie's corner looked at what I had and started going. I decided that Harry Potter had to go right next to Jamie's name so I fussy cut around him and sewed it next to two squares of fabric I had gotten from Jamie's Mom (Harry was every so graciously donated by Karen, who obviously knows and understands the bride and groom oh so well). Under her name I decided to put the fabric donated by Nena, Peter, Savannah and Veronica. Nena decided to buy a fat quarter of fabric in each of their favorite colors (although I believe Nena may have made an executive decision for the girls, I told her that she should just walk along the isle with the girls and buy whichever fabric they pulled off the shelf but she was less keen on this idea). I believe the choices are Green for Peter, Blue for Nena, Pink for Savannah and Purple for Veronica, but I may have that wrong. I am sure Nena can clear it up for me :) The smaller strips of fabric were amongst the copious amounts of fabric that Jamie's Mom (my auntie Terry donated).

I had many different fabrics to choose from, and I am trying my best to remember who gave me what but time has gone by and I have started to forget. I know that the vast majority of the fabric was give to me by Terry, but I did receive some stuff from other people. The tie-died bit of fabric is of course from our auntie Boni who wore that huge t-shirt for many years before donating it to Jamie and Karl's quilt. The awesome planet fabric was given to me by Jamie's sister Kristi, who did an AMAZING job finding and selecting fabric that would have meaning for the bride and groom. That particular fabric reminds me so much of Jamie's bedroom at the Holy Name house, good memories. The yellow fabric was donated by none other than Anna Banana!! It goes without saying that if Anna wants someone to remember her with a fabric swatch that fabric has to be yellow. Adrienne donated an awesome old t-shirt from her martial arts group (of which name I cannot currently remember). I bought the pink fabric while at a fabric store with Jamie because she commented on how awesomely pink it was and how Karl would like it. The floral burlap was given to me either by Kristi or Karen, I cannot quite remember who it was now...

Onto the Karl section of the quilt. My brother Sean donated the triathlon t-shirt. I also had to include more Harry for Karl, with them both being member of the Harry Potter Brigade, you had to know that Harry would feature in the quilt. Thanks again to Karen for providing this FANTASTIC fabric. Not only did it go into Jamie and Karl's quilt, I have plans to use it in another quilt I am working on. The super cool picture was drawn onto a t-shirt which the one and only Eoin donated for the quilt. Kristi also donated an old sweatshirt she had from her, Jamie and Karl's high school, which is where they started dating. I seem to remember something about a German class and an earlier incident in fourth grade : ) All that awesome green flannel was donated by our auntie Mari. I also included a square of fabric with nothing but stars at the request of my sister Sarah who wanted to forever commemorate the girliest night of Jamie's life where she laid under the stars up at Lamb's with me and Sarah gushing about Karl and how incredibly amazing he was. She pointed out to us, in the course of the evening a section of the sky where "Karl's name (was) written in the stars..."

Once I finished these parts of the quilt I had to move onto the exceptionally daunting task of cutting and sewing together the fabric for the dates. If I remember correctly it took me about four days to finish the date and I know for a fact that there was a lot of swearing involved (namely in working on the number 2).

It took a lot of work but I finally finished it, and if you ever want to see them I do have pictures of each step along the way. All those darn 2's were not easy to sew together and I really wished I had not choose to include the date as I was working on it. At least this way there is little chance that either the bride or the groom will ever forget their anniversary.

I then worked on cutting the fabric and sewing together the fabric for the date section. Of note in the fabric is the bit that my mother donated a part I cut up from an old Diaper Gang sweatshirt of hers. Also we have to big white blocks of fabric donated by Willow and Duncan, which they colored some awesome pictures on after I had finished making the quilt. Oh and some awesome cloud like patterned fabric right next to the date which was donated by my friend Nicole, who has never met Jamie or Karl but who put in a lot of time teaching me how to quilt and a lot of time helping me assemble it.

Finally by about the middle of August I finished the quilt top!! It took a few weeks, and a lot of math, but I got it done. I then decided to use and old bed sheet donated by my uncle Paul as the back of the quilt. It was almost big enough, but not quite so I sew on some floral sheet that Terry had given me.

The size of the back piece was so big I had no where in my house to lay it out and take a photo of it. Now came the truely challenging part in my eyes, laying out all three layers in preparation for quilting. I didn't even have the slightest clue how this was done, but luckily my good friend Nicole donated her Monday evening to come over and help me baste them together. First I had to starch and iron all the fabric, and rearrange all the furniture in my house to make room for laying out a project like this. The table and chairs went to the back of the kitchen with the couch and the rug to make a good space.

We then laid out and taped down the back section of the quilt (notice I had to patch a small hole in the plaid fabric that Paul donated). After which Nicole and I worked in tandem to unroll and spray adhesive the batting to the back of the quilt.

A lovely picture of Nicole hard at work showing me how to spray and smooth out the fabric as you work to lay the batting down.

We eventually got all the batting laid down and smoothed out so that it was stretched taught on the floor as well. Next came putting on the top bit of fabric...

I had Nicole snap a photo as we were getting ready to lay the top bit down. This took some time and work as it was my first quilt and some of my pieces were not sewn together taught. I was learning, but it all worked out in the end. If you look closely you can see the lovely kitchen with all our furniture shoved into it :)

Eventually we got it all pretty much smoothed out and laid down. Then came the fun part, Nicole and I spent at least an hour pinning it all together using a bazillion safety pins. Thanks again to Nicole for helping me do this and for teaching me how. I couldn't have done it without you.

And it looked like this. I then untaped the backing from the ground and rolled up the whole quilt and stashed in under my bed for a week or so while I played tour guide to Ben and Rachelle and welcomed Brynn back to town. Finally one night, while my Dad was in town, my good friend Brynn came over and helped me quilt it all together. Since the project was too big for my sewing machine to handle and I didn't have $200 plus dollars to spend on paying someone with a long arm machine to quilt it for me, we quilted it together with yarn. This meant threading yarn through all three layers and tying a million knots to keep it in place.

Brynn (who is cut off in the side of this picture) and I spent a few hours working on tying all these knots while my Dad slaved away in the kitchen cooking us a most delicious salmon meal. I still need to relocate the recipe for that because it was amazing!! After dinner was over and Brynn had left I got my Dad to sit down and help me finish quilting the thing together. I insisted that he help since he did not give me any fabric to put in the quilt, so helping me make part of it was his punishment ; )

By and by we finished quilting it together. I was so close to being finished and I still had a whole month till I had to leave for Minnesota to go to the wedding. I was feeling good, and decided to start some procrastination. I decided to work on a tag for the quilt. I had a lot of ideas, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on that tag. If I could have I would have included this entire post on it, but space did not allow, so I had to come up with something else. I didn't know how to include all that I wanted to say but eventually came up with this tag, which I quite like...

Lastly with about two weeks left until I had to leave for the wedding I worked on squaring up the quilt and sewing on the binding...

All squared up and reading for the binding to go on. I had never done binding before but with the help of some online blogs and many instructions from Nicole I started working on it...

I sewed all along the backside of the quilt to begin with, which is not easy when manipulating a quilt of this size...

It took some time and I often wanted to just give up and walk away. I have a hard time finishing the very last bit of a project. The end is so close, but I feel like I will never make it...

Finally though I finished the quilt and spent a lot of time jumping up and down in excitement!!!

I then folded it all up with some markers and shipped it to Kristi's house so that Duncan and Willow could work on drawing their pictures on the squares of fabric they had donated. The last part of the quilt was the easiest, I spent most of the rehearsal dinner down in the basement of my parents house kidnapping people to come down and sign the quilt. I left it up to each person to decide what they wanted to do, some drew a picture, some wrote a message, some signed their names...

It was a fun night. All I had to do after this was fold up the quilt and throw it in an awesome barbie bag for Jamie and Karl to open. I then sat back and watched silently while they tried to examine the quilt while everyone in the room tried to show them what part of the quilt they had done...

Although my favorite part came at the end of the day when Kathy and Karl were busing reserving a room at a hotel for their honeymoon, and I found Jamie in the kitchen quietly examining the quilt and trying to take it all in in her own way...

And that is the story of how I made an awesome quilt for Jamie and Karl. I love you both very much, and I hope the quilt will give you years of happiness!!!