Sunday, June 3, 2012

Roses for Rosita - the wedding quilt reveal

Hooray!  I finished the wedding quilt last night. It took a bit of figuring as I needed to fill in gaps to make everything fit together.  The various gray fabrics are the gap fillers.  I had to sew a couple of Y seams, otherwise it was pretty much straight stitching.  I am amazed at how well it came together, given the variation in sizes of the blocks.

Here's the story:
My nephew, Luis Miguel,  born and raised in Madrid (Spain) now works in Seattle. There, in 2008, he met Rosa, a Mexican lass, just before she returned to Mexico as her visa expired.  She was unable to return to the USA - something to do with the immigration laws.  They barely knew each other, but LM persisted and managed to visit Rosa wherever and whenever he could. They were engaged in 2010. In August, 2011, they obtained a fiancee visa allowing Rosa to return to the USA.  The stipulation was that they had to be married within a certain time frame, something like three months. They wasted no time.  Three weeks after Rosa arrived, they were married at our family cottage on Douglas Lake (northern Michigan).

I had promised them a quilt when they announced their engagement (Barcelona - there is a diamond in that block). I had asked for direction in terms of the type of quilt they would like to have and colors.  Soon after their wedding they told me that they wanted something that tells their story. To help me they sent me photos of the refrigerator magnets that they had collected as well as some photos they had taken. I used photos from the net and my imagination as well.

This quilt commemorates their courtship and the places they visited over the 2-1/2 years until their wedding.   The roses were given for every Valentines day and, of course, the wedding.

Here it is:

Roses for Rosita
Roses for Rosita  (96 inches  x 100 inches)


The color is a bit washed out - sorry.  I took the photo in full shade, but the sun still set a glare on things.  Next project for me is to learn to take good quilt photos!