The Travelling Wedding Quilt

I can finally, finally, show you the wedding quilt I have been working on since January.  My nephew, my Quilty Sister's oldest, got married this past weekend in Alberta and several members of my family made the trip from Nova Scotia to share in the joy. My nephew and I are very close as he spent 4 years in Halifax during his undergraduate studies at Dalhousie and we shared many good times.  I gave the toast to the groom at the wedding.  He is a wonderful man and his new bride is perfect for him.  I know they will have the best future.  So....on to the quilt....the wedding colours were purple and green and white and the new bride shared a few of her favourite quilt patterns with me and we ended up choosing this one....."Ups and Downs" by Sarah Fielke from her book, "Handquilted with Love"  This quilt pattern consists of  sewing together 900 - 3 1/2" squares with 100 of those squares being half square triangles.  First make the HSTs and combine them with  print squares and  background squares to make a 9 1/2" square nine patch block.

then combine 4 of those to make an 18 1/2" square block

Make 25 of these and set them 5 across by 5 down to result in a 
90 1/2" square quilt top. 

The fabrics chosen are from the "Lottie Da" collection by Heather Bailey.  The background fabric is my old faithful, Kona Snow.  For the first time, I have prewashed all the fabrics before sewing to see what kind of difference that makes.

 As for the quilting, this is screaming for me to quilt top to bottom free motion feathers in the background.  I will probably outline the coloured rows 1/4" away with medium purple thread and then not sure what I will do inside the coloured areas. It will come to me when I get this under the needle and I am anxious to get at it.  

Now for the backing....The groom really like this design (click on link   https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/moda-bake-shop-12941415/layers-love-quilt-4792441912) I sewed up the strips of hearts and took them to the wedding so that the wedding guests could sign them with their well wishes.

I am now sewing together the three heart strips with the signatures  and adding more Kona Snow to surround and make it big enough.  I hope to get the basting done in the next few days and start the quilting.  I will be mailing it to Alberta as soon as it is finished.   So, in the end, this quilt will have been from Halifax to White Point Beach Resort, to Halifax, to Edmonton, to Canmore, to Calgary, back to Halifax for assembly and quilting and then finally to its new home in Calgary. 
And since I had lots of leftover fabric I decided I would make a lap quilt for the Mother of the Bride.  We had not met in person but had made a great connection online and since she is a quilter, I knew she would appreciate receiving a quilt. She just loved it!  I quickly sewed up this little top with lots of area to showcase some quilting.  I still have fabric left.  A baby quilt someday maybe??

 I had an amazing time in Alberta and needless to say I visited a few quilt shops while there.  I will save that for another time.

Hope your Sunday is relaxing and filled with quilting! 😊