Finish up Friday! - Mr & Mrs Cousin's Wedding Quilt

It's Finish up Friday again!

To be truthful, this quilt has been finished for some time, but I don't like to blab about gift quilts on-line until they have reached their new homes! ☺ This one hung around for so long that it got hard to part with it!

This quilt was special in lots of ways... the recipient, Mr. Cousin is a pretty special guy. His family and mine have cottages next to each others and summer made us more like siblings than cousins when we were growing up. Mrs. Cousin is a live wire and the perfect compliment to Mr. Cousin's more reserved nature. Their New Year's Eve wedding was truly wonderful and they're more than deserving of a special gift.

Their decorating style is cool, spare and modern, so there was no chance I was going to undertake this quilt without a consult. Some quilters might like to surprise their loved ones, but I like to know they will love and use the quilts and that my creation will fit their style.

Mrs. Cousin made the design decisions on this one. After looking at a lot of pictures, she decided on a wonky log cabin. I'd never made one before and loved making these blocks.

She surprised me with a desire for colour and pattern. I really thought I'd be working in some soft greys and neutrals, perhaps with a pop of colour here or there. Nope! Most of the fabrics are from Joel Dewberry's Aviary line. They're not my typical fabrics - I don't work with floral or ornate patterns, but the robin's egg blue, chocolate brown, and hints of orange got me. I mixed in tone-on-tones in blue, brown, and orange. And of course, there's a bit of Kona thrown in for good measure (Sage and Chocolate, in case you're wondering!).

Each block is unique with a variety of strip widths and degrees of wonkiness. Yes, that is a word. Never mind that spell check has underlined it in red as I write. This was my first foray into improv pieced blocks and I loved it. It was more like applying a technique than following a pattern and felt like I was creating, not just sewing.

I'm not normally a fan of sashing, but once those blocks were together, it was clear they needed a little something to sooth their punchy prints and colours. Kona Snow did the trick.
After so many firsts and departures from my usual way of doing things, I fell back on an old stand-by for the quilting. Those prints just needed the space to do their thing and diagonal quilting in caramel thread achieved that nicely.

The backing is is one of the fabrics used in the blocks - a damask. During our initial consult, Mrs. Cousin spoke about how much she loved damask, so it seemed only right that this gorgeous print take a big role. When I delivered the quilt to Mr. Cousin at work, I had it folded present style with the backing out, and he commented right away on how much he liked the damask too!

This  quilt was not content to be photographed in the back yard. On a sunny spring day, she demanded to be taken to the beach. I acquiesced.

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea" - Isak Dinesen

Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Cousin! Here's to many happy years together!

J