First group project

The first group quilting project took place not long after I first learned to quilt. Our quilting teacher was getting married - what better gift than something quilt related?

My partner in crime concocted some relatively plausible excuse to procure the entire guest list, with addresses. (I'm still not sure what she said, but it worked!) Then we sat down and wrote a note explaining the project, asking each person to sign an enclosed muslin square and return them to us before the date of the wedding. We would embroider all of the signatures and present all of the squares to the couple on their wedding day. (We didn't have a lot of time, so we were aiming just to have all the squares ready; they could be assembled into a quilt after the big day).

Incredibly, we had full participation. Everyone sent signed squares. More than that, even, because the bride's best friend found an old letter from the bride's father (who had passed away), and copied that onto a square too. (They had been very close, she wrote to us, and she knew that the wedding quilt wouldn't be right without him.)

This is a shot of some of the ones I worked on first. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the finished set, but I hope it'll give you a taste of the project.



On the wedding day, we arrived at the reception just a few minutes before the bride and groom, but it was enough time to lay out all of the squares in a row. We'd divided the blocks in half and had each tackled the embroidery on our half individually, so we were seeing the whole batch together for the first time. It was pretty exciting!

But our excitement was nothing compared to that of the bride and groom. They went down the line (accumulating quite a following of guests behind them) and read each and every message. And then we pulled out the pièce de résistance - the square from her father, and there was not a dry eye in the house.