A Surprise Quilt

I belong to a small guild, and one of the ladies is getting married this month.  And, we are quilters, so of course we had to make her a quilt.  We decided to do a "block raffle", using these blocks from Kim Schaefers Flower Festival book.  

The backgrounds were handed out, to be constant, and the instructions were to use bright fabrics.  We each chose a different block.

We were 15 in number last year, so we each made a block, including the bride, and then the blocks were raffled.  We 'fixed' the raffle by excluding the bride's name from the draw.  She so hoped to win, poor dear, never knowing there was no way she'd get those blocks.    We all had so much fun with that, and with making blocks right in front of her at retreat.  (to be fair, she was making one too). 

Here are the blocks on raffle night.  One of the blocks was still in transport :)

The ladybug block was added, and the top pieced by several ladies in the guild, and then it came to me for quilting.

 Some dot to dot quilting in the borders, which my friend thought looked like hedgerows.  Perfect for a garden.

 And the sashings got filled cross hatching, which I thought could look like stepping stones in the grass between flowerbeds.

 The tulip above is the block the bride made, and it did need some additional stitching in the flower, so it was a perfect place to add interlocking hearts.

 I had some fun with the backgrounds too, and used four backgrounds, creating a little Sudoku chart to make sure each background only appeared in each row and column once.

I used a double batting to make sure the flowers had lots of dimension.

 One of the ladies in our guild makes very special labels, so she made a special label for this quilt, unfortunately I didn't get a photo of that.

The quilt was given to the bridge and groom earlier this month.

Best wishes to the bride and groom for a happy lifetime together.