Tag Archives: wedding

Day 27: Magic Dishes

There’s a special dish that’s part of every holiday meal. You can see it in the food photo from our Christmas meal on the left and Thanksgiving on the right.

Here’s what it looks like empty. What is it? It’s a large platter that I decorated and had guests sign on our wedding day. I have the guest book from my parents’ wedding. It’s pretty and interesting and…. sits inside a box. Our dish gets used 3-4 times every year and is on display the rest of the time.

Why is it magic? Because of all the love that went into making it. I started at one of those stores where you can paint ceramics. They’ll fire them in the kiln and you come back to a finished glazed piece. This time I wanted it sign-able so I did most of the decorating in-store. Then I borrowed a black glaze pen and had wedding guests sign with it at our reception. Returned the platter to the store and picked up our finished piece post-honeymoon. Cool, huh?

Jasmine’s Wedding Quilt – In Her Words

Leave a reply

My cousin Jasmine is today’s guest blogger. I got to sew simple log-cabin quilt blocks for her wedding guests to sign. Now it’s a treasured quilt. Here’s what she has to say about it:

Getting married to the guy you love is such an awesome thing.

But you know what was almost equally as awesome about our wedding day? That ALL the people we love came from all over the country to be there with us.

Seriously – when else in your life does that happen? Everyone in ONE place??

So one of our favorite gifts we got was the signature quilt that Megan made for us. She put fabric blocks out for everyone to write notes to us on, and then quilted them together into this exquisite quilt. The colors match our wedding day – a beautiful red-orange-yellow fall day in Massachusetts. It’s super fun to read and re-read the messages all our loved ones left for us.

And the quilt itself is such good quality that I’m not worried about ruining it in the wash, or leaving it out as decoration on the couch. Thank you Megan, for such a thoughtful gift that keeps on reminding us of all the love in our life!

Self-Portrait Quilt for the Blogger’s Quilt Festival

9 Replies

It’s time for the blogger’s quilt festival! This event is an online quilt show. Here’s how it works: quilters who have blogs enter up to two quilts for the show. They are judged and the winners receive prizes. All entrants have a chance at the random drawing to win participation prizes as well.

My entry this year is a self-portrait for the mini quilts category. One thing I tell my customers when selecting their inspiration photograph is to choose one that they’d display. It can have good composition and lighting but most importantly be something that gives them the feels. This photograph was taken by my now mother-in-law after she took me to the salon to get my hair cut and dyed for my wedding. I had been blonde for a while but wanted my natural hair color for the big event. I remember feeling special, beautiful, and loved as this picture was snapped.

This photo is featured on my business cards these days. My quilt is literally the “face” of my quilting business and represents both what I can do artistically and how making art makes me feel.

I encourage you to go check out the other entries. I’m headed over there now and am sure to be inspired!

Vote for your favorites here: http://amyscreativeside.com/bloggers-quilt-festival/ The links for each category are under the quilt festival logo. The categories are: Mini, Small, Large, Appliqué, Art, Hand Quilted, Home Machine Quilted, Modern, Original Design, ROYGBIV, Scrappy, and Viewer’s Choice.

Home Grown Friends

4 Replies

I’ve been a California girl for a long time now. Still, Connecticut is home. It’s where Katie is. She’s been my friend since 5th grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I was the new kid who had just changed schools (again) and decided not to make friends this time. Well, she would have none of that nonsense. She was gently persistent and soon I had someone to sit with at lunchtime and to play with at recess.Last weekend marked her first year anniversary of getting married. I’ve been working on a quilt for her and her husband. It isn’t quite finished yet but includes paper-pieced numbers on a green background. Of course I’ll share photos of that once it’s complete.

Here we are goofing off in high school. At this time we had boyfriends who were friends before we knew them. Lots of double-dates to the movies, dances, and bowling. Then we’d ditch the boys for a sleepover, ice-cream fest, and chick flick night.

I spent my summers away and then left for college in Illinois. Still, we kept in touch. It’s one of those friendships where we don’t need any time to get to know each other again. We just pick up where we left off, even if we haven’t seen each other in years.

Katie flew west for my wedding. She’s a high school math teacher and took time off at the beginning of the school year (September 6th) to be here for me. She stayed at my house, helped with all the preparations, and celebrated with us. Here she is walking me to my bridal dressing room.

I found out recently that I have some food allergies, including a mild gluten intolerance. I’m a little bummed. You know what cheered me up quite a bit? Katie wrote a food blog post inspired by me. Here’s her recipe for crust-less spinach quiche. I can’t wait to try it!

My husband and I have a food garden this year. This watermelon looked like it hadn’t grown any more in about a week. So we called it ripe and cut it open. Not so much. Well, now we know to let the others mature a bit longer. As for Katie and I, we’ll decide just how mature we want to act as adults. It probably involves lots of ice cream. And dancing.

ZK Wedding Pillow

Leave a reply

My cousin Zack got married this weekend to his high school sweetheart. Doesn’t he look dapper?! Of course the bride is gorgeous. Welcome to our family, Kacee. I love you both. I wasn’t able to attend the wedding, but wanted to make something special for the couple. So here’s what I came up with. It’s a joint present with my Dad. He paid for the materials.

It’s a crumb pillow! This one measures 12×20 and has a few embroidered details as well as their initials. On the bottom is their wedding date, and before the “Z” you’ll find their first names. See?

Congratulations Zack and Kacee. Happy honeymoon!

Sneaky Peeks

Leave a reply

Here are a few of the treasures I’ve been working on. The first is a wedding quilt for a dear friend. Spoiler alert! It’s green.

I wasn’t able to go out and get this tracing for a portrait quilt of a dog enlarged today. So I pulled some fabrics for it instead! Here’s my method of keeping everything straight once I’ve made the decisions. FYI: I’ve put 90 minutes into this quilt already and haven’t yet started putting it together. That’s why I charge $25 per subject as a design fee!

I finished this quilt. Woo! It feel so good to have a project done done done. This is a signature quilt and is for sale in my etsy shop. You can sign this quilt in the beige fabric spots… which, as you can see, make up most of the quilt. It’s great for weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and other celebrations. Super-durable, it’ll hold up to washings. Just make sure to follow the directions on whatever fabric marker you buy. Some of them need to be set with a hot iron.

I’ve also been working on this week’s Project Quilting Challenge, which is up-cycling.

I pulled some fabric for my new guild’s round robin. I’ll be adding a border and some embroidery. Unfortunately, this is all supposed to be secret until the big reveal in a few months so I cannot share photos of it until then.

What are you working on?

UFOs A-plenty

Leave a reply

How many UFOs do you have? No, not the space ships, I mean unfinished objects. Mine are mostly sewing projects and I’m sure I have at least 30, though I haven’t done an exact count recently. This week I’ve been hopping from thing to thing, not quite satisfied to sit down with just one.

Please forgive my lack of photos this time. I took them… and moved the camera away from its cord… and promptly forgot where that cord is? I know, it’s where I left it. Wherever that is. So just use your imagination for this one and I’ll get back to photos on the next post.

Here are some of the UFOs I’ve been working on this week:

A one block log cabin quilt with Asian prints.
Decorating my work apron. We’re required to wear one, but can trick it out however we want to. I’m adding pockets, making it shorter, and decorating it with some of my crumb quilting goodness. Yes, I’ll show you guys a picture soon.
Binding some place mats for the senior center.
Hand quilting “Estey’s Quilt”… It’s almost ready to show you guys! I spent several hours working on this at a car show. Thankfully, my husband recommended bringing along some handwork. I’m so glad he did because it would have been beyond boring for me without it!
Planning out a birthday present for my baby brother. He’s turning 14. I know, not really a baby anymore but he’s still my baby.
Making a red/blue/purple/black string quilt
Playing around with improvisational piecing
Pulling fabrics and otherwise planning a portrait quilt based on a wedding photograph
And, of course, working on the 4 subjects piece I wrote about in my last blog post.

Whew! I don’t know why I’ve been project-hopping like this but I’ll just go with it for now, especially since I don’t have any big deadlines coming up quickly. I’ll just enjoy dabbling in everything.

Welcome to this Blog.

2 Replies

Hello and welcome to this new blog for the business I recently started, QUILTArtbymegan. I’ll keep this short and sweet tonight and leave you guys with sneak peak of elements for the newest piece I’m working on. It’s based on a photograph taken nearly two years ago before my cousin’s wedding. Here’s that picture:

Here’s my little pile of stuff I’ve gotten ready to start making this into a medium-sized quilt. You can see the tracing underneath a pile of fabrics I’ve chosen for all of the different skin tones, hair colors, etc. They’re organized on the cheat-sheet beside the piles so for quick reference. Tomorrow I will go enlarge the tracing then start assembling the quilt.