Making a little remembrance for the bride

Like most brides, Anna used a practice bouquet for the rehearsal that her Best Lady, Alexis made at her shower.  It was a little large to keep, but I wanted to do something with it to make a little remembrance for her.  I decided not to use the paper ribbon, but there were lots of fabric ribbons--especially from Crate and Barrel.

I started making diagonal rows of ribbon just sewing and flipping on a foundation.

A pressing cloth was necessary to prevent scorching or melting the delicate ribbons.

Squaring it up and stay stitching the edges are next and then we are ready to sandwich it.

A little quick hand quilting at the seams holds the layers together.

This is the back with labeling.  Anna used the cute, little rubber stamp on the tags for the fans and her notes in the welcome bags.

Continuous bias binding was made with the same fabric used for the back.

I thought you'd enjoy this photo of Jim and me with the lovely bride at the reception.  It was taken by Meredith Mastroianni who works with Anna in Boston.

Three generations: The bride, the mother of the bride and the grandmother of the bride!

                                                                                    (Photo by James Fisher, 6/26/2010)

"There's got to be a morning after"--Sunday after the wedding

Fans and cold, sparkling fruit juice tell the story: it was hot!  Despite the heat, the wedding was very close to perfect.

Purple ribbon left over from decorating, lilac table cloths, and purple planters filled with purple flowers.

The tent  from Partymakers of Greensboro was beautiful and provided welcome shade.

Another view of the tent.

The prayer flags were very popular.

Another view of some of the prayer flags.

Two strings of McDonough family flags.

This planter is called Walter Hehr (pronounced hare).  It was named after my grandfather.  We made him festive with a white tipped purple petunia plant.

Best wishes to the happy couple.  Quilted Librarian out to continue with the clean-up.

Wedding Prayer Flags

Whenever I saw pictures of Tibet or of the Tibetan community in exile in India, I was fascinated by the strings of prayer flags. From one small string flying outside a dwelling to thousands of strings flying from stupas or shrines.   Dan has brought me several sets from India over the years and I even made a set of art quilts that are prayer flags.  (See photo above. )  Dan has a little set that I made and I made a little set for Dan's friend Ravenna when we went to hear her sing at Duke.

Traditional prayer flags are printed with a mantra or prayer and Tibetan Buddhists believe that the flapping of the flags in the breeze carries these prayers away from the flag to spirits greater than their own.  The prayers written on Tibetan prayer flags always express positive intentions for happiness, enlightenment, and protection of all beings.  When we were thinking about decorations for Anna and Matt's wedding, it occured to me that I could make prayer flags in all different purple fabrics. To make them even more special to the occasion, I'm making family strings of flags with the names of the family members written on the flags.

These are all the flags cut from my purple fabric stash.

So that the flags won't bunch and fold up on each other when they are hanging, I decided to zigzag them to the crochet cord.

Here's a detail of that happening.

The first string is finished. It's for our family. Anna and Matt will have their own string of flags as their family begins.

Quick update:
Frieda Oxenham also has a post about prayer flags today!  Thanks for the heads-up, Frieda.

Making some personalized wedding decorations

Since these pennants are meant to be a surprise for Anna, I'm scheduling this post for the week of the wedding. I've been seeing pennants on so many of the blogs and I got to thinking that it would be a great way to decorate the screened porch along with the little Japanese lantern lights.

I drew an isoceles triangle as a pattern and started through my stash of purple fabrics. I decided to alternate light and dark for the pennants and the letters and the lining of the pennants.



I ironed Wonderunder© on the back of fabric scraps to cut out the letters.



I made a length of continuous bias tape from which to hang the pennants.
They say "Best wishes Anna & Matty!" A pennant with a heart separates the first two words and the ampersand separates their names.



Here are all the rest of the pennants cut out and waiting to be sewn together.



All finished! The top row shows the pennants from the back and the bottom row is the front sides.

Anna came up with a very clever design for the table tents.  She and Matty decided to name the tables rather than just put numbers on them.  They are named after places that are special to both of them.

This is one of the table tents all finished.

Anna punched all the holes in the programs and hammered the snaps, too.  I trimmed them all.

A stack of finished programs.

DIY Wedding Fun

When Anna arrived on Thursday night, she brought not only a wedding dress, but a whole suitcase full of wedding craft fun.  Yesterday we worked on place cards for the reception.  She had printed the names on circular stickers using the font she had purchased for the save-the-date cards and invitations. I cut strips from some gorgeous Japanese paper she bought in Boston and then she cut them with a decorative cutter.

Here are the finished place cards.

Since this is a backyard wedding in the South in the summer, she thought fans might be in order.  They arrived yesterday.  We will decorate these with ribbon.

Quilting update on Anna and Matt's wedding quilt

This is just a quick update of progress on Anna and Matt's wedding quilt. I turned the lights out in Safety Pin Studio and used the flash so the quilting would show up a little better. This is actually the sashiko pattern called seven treasures of the Buddha.

Here's a view of the quilting from the back.

I'm not sure how I feel about this new editing format on Blogger.

Pin Cushions

Margaret Cooter, whose blog I thoroughly enjoy, has done a wonderful little post on pins. Since I'm just plugging away at quilting on the wedding quilt, I thought I would add to what Margaret started by sharing my pin cushions with you using the wedding quilt as a background. The wool felted cushion above is the one I use most of the time. The lanolin prevents rusting.



I believe it was Dan who at some point in his youth, color coded all of the pins and wrote the word in black pins. I loved it and have more or less maintained it since then.



This is my lovely little wrist cushion that my darling niece, Caylan made for me. I posted about it before here.



This is a Longaberger sewing notions basket that has a pin cushion in the lid.



Nancy Crow taught me to appreciate baskets and I've been collecting unique ones since. This is a tiny little basket pin cushion that I found years ago in Cherokee, North Carolina when I accompanied her on a basket shopping trip.



Jim brought me the first of the antique pin cushions, the shoe, when he made a trip to England. I found the silver cat when we were in London together and the little China one is from an antique mart in Indiana.



Since I am a huge fan of tea, I had to have a teapot pin cushion, too.



These are my regular old tomatoes pin cushions in a wonderful African basket.

Quilted Librarian is out to clean and quilt!

Remaking a jacket for the wedding

Photo of me (by Jim) hemming the remade jacket wearing a t-shirt Jim got me for our anniversary.

You've no doubt heard of reverse engineering, well this weekend, I engaged in a little re-engineering of a jacket that I got for a song (70% off at Steinmart). It wasn't quite right--not petite, so it was way too long and the sleeves had these impossibly ugly turned up cuffs--but there was potential.



The first thing I did was get rid of those cuffs.



Then I was able to hem the sleeves to fit my short arms.



Shortening the body of the jacket was the next order of business. The jacket is a solid color and except of the pleated edge, it's pretty plain. I decided I needed some kind of decoration on the front.



Using the bands on either side of the front as a guide, I made a pattern of that area with tracing paper.



Using the tracing paper pattern, I cut two base pieces.



My idea was to use the kimono pieces that remained from the shirt I had made years ago to create two panels to appliqué to the jacket. I decided to do a little sashiko embroidery on the panels as I had done for the shirt.



Using a simple sew and flip technique, I covered the base fabrics. I tried to alternate silk with 100% cotton because the silk slips so much. I press after each seam.



Here's on panel nearly done. I pin the sides of the silk pieces to the base fabric to help keep them in place. I don't trim until I stay stitch the entire panel.



Stay stitching is slightly less than one quarter inch from the edge because I'm going to turn that seam allowance under to sew it down to the jacket and I don't want the stay stitching to show.



Here's one panel ready to be embroidered.



This book, by the brilliant Kimi Ota, has been my sashiko guide for years.



I'm spreading three different sashiko designs over the panel.



This little circle template comes in handy for marking the seven treasures of Buddha pattern on a small scale.



The embroidery on this panel is finished.



Here's the first panel sewn in place. I'll model and have Jim take a photo when it's all finished. Sweet dreams for now.