Just before Christmas (with thanks to an injured ankle that meant I was off my feet a lot of the time) I finished hand quilting Son#5 and DIL#5's wedding quilt. I derive a lot of pleasure (and stress!) from making these quilts but one part I especially enjoy as I plan and work and pray for the couple is finding ways to incorporate a number of symbols into the quilt.
I like to use white or cream as a background in my wedding quilts. Not very practical, I will admit, but it does symbolise the bride and purity. Other colours and elements are often chosen with the bride in mind (and I'll admit, that I possibly don't always get it right). Quilting elements also have meaning from hearts for love, continuous designs that represent eternity, wedding rings and monograms which are self explanatory, and even lilies for devotion.
While I love making scrap quilts and being able to use up the tiniest scrap (blame my grandmother for my frugality) I also love the fact that they represent all the bits and pieces that go together to make up our lives. Including some ugly pieces that take on a new light when viewed as part of the whole quilt is also a symbol of how even the dark times in our lives can be used by the Master Crafter to create something beautiful.
This latest quilt had some challenges that I hadn't had to consider with previous wedding quilts (or at least not to the same degree). Namely, how to include the backgrounds of both the bride and groom coherently. I decided that one way I could do this would be to include fabrics and colours that represented their respective countries and states. Therefore there is red, white and blue for USA and Texas, green and gold for Australia, black and silver for New Zealand, and light blue and white for NSW. A number of the fabrics were bought during lockdown and some of the colours weren't want I had expected. However I decided to keep them in as a reminder of the pandemic and that life doesn't always turn out as we expect - that sometimes our plans are thwarted or we have to make new plans. And, after all, it was a pandemic wedding.
There are also a number of Christmas fabrics simply because I like them and they were the available scraps that I had on hand but they also serve as a reminder that we were praying that DIL#5 would be able to be in New Zealand and united with her husband in time for Christmas (and, praise God, she was!).
As well as the fabrics being representative of their different backgrounds, I wanted the pattern to also reflect this. After considering and discarding a number of patterns, I eventually settled on this scrappy star pattern. I pieced fifty stars to represent the fifty stars on the American flag. These stars do form secondary stars when joined together but, trust me, there were originally only fifty stars. The quilt is longer than it is wider on account of the arrangement of the stars. This arrangement also gives a cross-like effect that represents the Southern Cross. Thus both DIL#5 and Son#5 have their countries represented through the stars.
The quilt backing is also made up of stripes but, alas, not thirteen. It was hard enough to quilt through all the extra seams as it was but it is meant to represent [again] the American flag as well as DIL#5's family. The blue was chosen for DIL#5 (I love this fabric and am thrilled there was enough left over once the quilt had been bound for me to use in another project) and the gold for Son#5.
I generally prefer piecing over applique but felt that this quilt needed something to add interest, hence the vines in the border. The applique includes two little love birds in each corner - which probably doesn't need explanation.
They symbolism didn't stop when it came time to quilt. There are two different intertwining heart patterns (of four hearts each) inside the centre stars that represent love and the way our lives and families are meshed together through marriage. One of these designs is not clear on the front but works as a reminder that what happens in our lives is not always clear until much later (case in point: DIL#5’s first visa refusal).
In the corners where the stars meet there is a circular design that represents eternity as it is a continuous design with seemingly no beginning and no end (like a wedding ring).
Around the stars I quilted a rope that represents a cord of three strands that is not easily broken and which was the theme of their wedding. I wasn't able to wait until DIL#5 brought from America the stencil I had ordered for this design and so had to draft my own. This was possibly the most rewarding part of the quilting: when I laid the quilt on the floor and saw how the rope wound around the centre stars I was thrilled with the effect. However, when I began quilting the outer border I realised that the pattern I had chosen obscured the effect of the rope so I ended up undoing it because, for me, this rope was the most important symbol in the quilt.
There are intertwined wedding rings between each section of the rope. The outer border contains linked hearts which symbolise their married life together and the lives that they are now linked to (I agree with the idea that you don't marry a person but their whole family!). These hearts are also representative of the koru which is a Māori symbol that represents new life, growth, strength and peace. On the two shorter sides I have also included a a cross symbol that represents the Southern Cross.
The quilt is totally reversible and can be appreciated from both sides but looks vastly different. Being able to see some patterns more clearly on the back than the front is a reminder that God is working even when we don’t always see it.
And the finished quilt:
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