Some Unfinshed Business

Ok, so for those that know me well, you know that I am easily distracted and sometimes, despite the best intentions, I don't get around to finishing projects. This is especially true for some of our wedding "projects". We have just a few of those leftover from 2005!

We never did get around to ordering pictures or really doing anything with our pictures except scatter a few here and there around the house. Also, we had asked someone to help us create a guestbook quilt for our wedding and reception guests. At the time, I had a lot of great ideas for it and Candice, a friend of a friend, of Textile Stockpile, helped me form my ideas into one cohesive idea for a smaller, tapestry-like, quilt that would hang on the wall. The main concept of the quilt is a tree with the guests signing and writing little wishes or quotes on leaves. Candice must have spent hours cutting out the leaves, we dutifully brought them to the weekend wedding at Spider Lake and to our second reception in Grand Rapids, our lovely guests signed them as instructed, we tucked them into a little bag for safe keeping and there they sat...and sat...and sat...until recently.

The past few weeks, I have had the joy of participating in the wedding festivities for my friends Chris and Jessica. At Jessica's bridal shower, her mother and other female family members were gathered tightly around the dining room table. They were speaking in excitedly, practically giddy, hushed tones; they were more than happy to clue me in on their "devious" plot. Jessica's family was working on, you guessed it, a guestbook quilt!! Well, this was all rather interesting. They showed me their designs and the fabric and the pens and...oh wait, there I go getting all distracted...In any case, they inspired me to dig out our little bag of quilt scraps and to dig up Candice and see if we couldn't get this project back on track. Thankfully, Candice had patiently saved all of her notes from our project (started over four years ago!!). She has been helpful in listening to my new ideas and with arranging to get her the materials (over 300 miles away).

I think the most difficult task came moments ago when I had to decide what, exactly, I wanted to include in our quilt. Earlier, I had the idea to include a part of my wedding dress or something from the wedding into the design. I have beads left over from the dummy first dress (yes, yes, at one point I had two of the same dress in my possession), I have ribbon from the dummy dress, the straps from the actual wedding dress...and my veil. Adding the veil to the other items was a difficult decision. I have only looked at my dress maybe once since it was professionally cleaned back in 2006. I, carefully opened the box and called hubs over to help make the decision. I didn't realize I was going to be so sentimental about such a seemingly simple decision.

In the end, we decided that trashing the veil to include in the quilt project was the right thing to do. There is plenty of dress to go around for other possible, future, projects. I am sticking by this decision and can't wait to see the finished project. Of course, of course, I will be sure to post pictures when it is done which probably won't be for a little while.