Wedding Sampler

Yet another project that took me years, and which I finally finished last week.  The idea came from the now-defunct British magazine Needlecraft; one of their regular designers came up with a pieced sampler to commemorate her wedding.  As I worked on my version over the years I made a lot of changes and additions, and I also lost the original article, so I now have almost no memory of that that sampler looked like.  Here's mine:

 

 The original had its panels all sewn together, but since I wasn't patient or careful enough to make sure my pieces fit together, I opted to finish each piece separately, and then attach them all together using different techniques (I got this idea from a stunning art quilt in a local quilt show).

One thing I do remember from the Needlecraft piece was that there was a french knot heart, so mine has one too:

  

 Plus three other embroidered hearts, using chain stitch, fly stitch, and laidwork.  I tacked on a wedding milagro in the center.

 

I love crazy quilting, so this square was lots of fun to make.   I especially love the feather stitch with the clusters of beads at each branch, a motif I've since used over and over.  I finished this square by twisting together a bunch of specialty fibers and tacking them down around the perimeter.

My bouquet:

 

 I think the original had some kind of bouquet too, maybe? Flowers, definitely.  My flowers are buttons and yo-yos, with a little tonal couching for the thingie holding the stems (I'm sure that's the technical term). The border looked a little plain, so I embroidered some ribbon flowers at the bottom corners, flowers whose names began with my and Mr. Beadgirl's initials.

This isn't anything particularly symbolic, I just thought it was pretty:

These are the lace bands from the Victoria Sampler's Heirloom Wedding Sampler, which I made for a friend.  It's counted thread work and drawn thread work (that company's designs are gorgeous and intricate).

A piece from my wedding dress:

I edged it with three strands of "pearl" trim twisted together, like the trim on my dress.

For the center, our wedding date:

Appliqueing the central fabric onto velvet was tricky because of the nap, and the oval ended up very wonky.  Rather than undoing it and trying again, I tried to cover up the wonkiness with embroidery and bead embroidery.  I edged the piece with bead picots, because one can never have enough beads.  

Apropos of nothing, my wedding date looks like binary code, which is kind of neat -- 57.

I have this hanging over our bed, and I was really pleased with myself until one of the cats started clawing it; I may have to rethink the location.  But it feels great to have finished this.