A Wedding Gift

My uncle was recently reintroduced to his college sweetheart. She looked him up one day out of the blue, they started talking, both happened to be single, and then immediately picked back up where they left off 40 years ago.

So he called me, *ahem* his favorite niece *ahem*, to let me know they were flying out to Vegas to get married.

I woke up one morning with an idea and lots of motivation to make a embroidered pillow as a wedding gift to them. I Facetime'd with my mom all day as she helped me come up with a design and we chatted all day while I sewed. (seriously how awesome is video chat for keeping in contact?)

Since I didn't know what exactly what their future decor will look like, I went with a mix of grays and browns. This is normally a big no-no in my color selection as I never mix blacks with browns EVER. I was a bit concerned when I pulled the fabrics but I just went with it reminding myself that it'll be fine! I also learned I own very few brown prints. My brown phase ended like 6 years ago.

First things first, I embroidered a center block with their name and oh-so-special date. I wanted to use this as a focus. Then I cut out a bunch of triangles and started piecing them together to add a border.

After I had it all assembled I was a bit sad that the middle was too plain. I pushed ahead anyways and finished the pillow. After I finished sewing it all together and adding the brown binding I was still sad about the middle so I finagled it around enough to get the needle back under the center and added a border. Then I picked out the thread and did it again because my dumbass didn't watch close enough and I sewed a small piece of the back to the front.

Here it is before I added the border around the embroidery:

I chose Sublime by  Doohikey Designs in Cream Swirl for the back and added the dark brown border for an accent:

My husband and i were their official chauffeurs for the day. After the wedding at the famous A Little White Chapel, I surprised them with my gift.

I think I even saw my uncle get a bit teary eyed - not that he'd ever admit it. They carried it with them on the plane home and got to tell their story about a 100 more times (my uncle LOVES to talk).

LVMQG Quilt Retreat Weekend

This is a cross post from my blog entry over

 at the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild website:

The Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild hosted a sewing retreat at this amazing house in southern Utah:

Check out the view from the roof deck:

11 members came for the weekend.  We all met up in Hurricane, UT, and visited a few local shops (Superior Threads, Quilted Works, Ace Hardware (seriously!), Scrap Apple, etc) before heading to the house.  Sharon was nice enough to feed us all on the first night there and brought a big pot Turkey Soup which was delicious!  There was no recipe because she just made it up (oh how I wish I could do that!).

The house had this insanely large basement so all of us were able to spread out and have a table, ironing areas, cutting areas, Accuquilt Go areas, etc!  HUGE SPACE.

We occupied it pretty quick.  This was the aftermath after the first sewing night:

Darlene gave a small gift to everyone!  She made embroidered luggage tags personalized with all of our names to remember this weekend!

Sharon created 2.5" tiny pieced squares and passed them out for all of us to create something with it.  Here's what everyone made:

(Photo Courtesy of Jan!  Read her blog for more details about this photo)

Not included in that photo is Zany Quilter's zippered pouch, Sharon's jounal cover,  and my block which is still in progress.

We had some people cutting up scraps to make their own Sparkle Punch Quilt, some working on  Swoon blocks, some Octogonal Orb blocks, and many other quilty projects!

Here's everyone in action:

Andrea's Sparkle Punch:

(Photo Courtesy of Jan)

Vic's version of Swoon:

(Photo Courtesy of Jan)

Swoon in progress and one finished on the top left of the photo:

(Photo Courtesy of Jan)

Jan's Octogonal Orb blocks:

(Photo Courtesy of Jan)

The Accuquilt Go! team cutting up many 3 1/2" squares for their own Sparkle Punch:

(Photo Courtesy of Jan)

Cola's Swoon blocks:

On our way out we grabbed a group shot:

(Photo Courtesy of Jan)

You thought that was the end of pictures?

Jan posted about the retreat over on her blog.  She has more photos too!

Sharon worked on this quilt at the retreat and posted about the retreat over here on her blog.

Have a great weekend!