Our Wedding Quilt

2023-2024

Instead of a guest book, I had our loved ones write on pieces of fabric that I then turned into a wedding quilt. The design was inspired by a photo of an Amish quilt from 1920 that featured a ‘melon patch’ block pattern.

The fabrics on the quilt top consist of secondhand quilting cottons, upcycled bedsheets, scraps of Shibori from my travels in Japan, and colorful woven scraps from a clothing company I love called Ace & Jig. The fabrics of the quilt back consist of thrifted cotton and the back panels of some of my husband’s discarded shirts. There are pieces of both of us in here, all held together by ‘tied knots’ of red yarn.

Our wedding party was small, consisting of our immediate families only, but in the time since the wedding I’ve had friends and family come to stay with us and have asked them to sign the quilt as well. I look forward to collecting more love notes from our support network and community as time goes on.

An interesting thing to note about this quilt is its size. Rather than being large enough to fit our bed, it’s more of a two-person lap quilt. I figured, we probably spend more time watching TV together than in bed - a true modern couple! An additional, albeit unintentional, advantage of this quilt size is that it only covers half the bed - my side, because I’m always cold and he’s always hot… I guess some things about marriage don’t really change :)