I've known Michelle since she was a little girl, she and her family live next door to us. It was fun watching her grow up - she was always interesting to talk with and always had a smile and a wave for us...and now she is all grown up and married! I showed Michelle the quilt I made for the boy and DIL for their wedding and she loved the idea of having her guests sign quilt blocks, too...
This is Michelle's guest book - inside the book the quilt blocks were spray-glued on top of the plastic sheet protectors - if they were inside the sheet protectors no one would be able to write on them ;)
You can see the glue through the fabric - it wasn't quite dry yet - but when dry it's invisible and it's also water-proof so when the quilt was finished and washed, no traces of glue remained and it was soft and wonderful! I put a little piece of paper on each page asking guests to not write too closely to the edge of the fabric...but, of course, they did...if the guests were quilters/sewers they would know better!! There has to be room for a seam folks!!
Michelle and Josh were married at the Stimson-Green Mansion in Seattle - it was a beautiful day and the mansion is really wonderful inside - lots of dark, carved wood, glass-front bookcases and wonderful fireplaces.
Yours truly also did Michelle's flowers - I think they turned out really nice - at least I was happy with them!
Doesn't this have an old-fashioned look to it? The guests wrote with permanent ink pens made for fabric and I set the ink with a hot iron before washing. (I don't really wash quilts - they're not dirty, after all; I put them in a cold-water rinse and then into the dryer until dry. I used Hobbs 80/20 cotton batting so this quilt was super soft.)
As Michelle and Josh use this quilt the messages will fade, but that's okay, I made copies of every block and put those copies back into their guest book so they'll have them to look back on if the signatures get washed away.
This is one of my very favorite quilts to make - it sews up really quickly - got to love that! The floating block border is another favorite of mine - I even did the math so it worked out even! The finished blocks were 8-inches square, so with borders this quilt ended up being 52 x 52-inches...a good cuddle size.
Michelle and Josh make a great couple - they are two of the nicest people in the world and I wish them all the happiness there is!
