Wedding quilt finished at last

Exactly one year and ten months to the day, the wedding quilt is finally finished. The plan was conceived when I was asked by my friend to be the matron of honor at her wedding. I have known both the bride and groom since before they knew each other. The got to know each other well at a Leader Training week called "Wood badge" where I served on Staff. They were both in the "Bear" patrol.

You may have noticed the bear paw blocks around the outer border so now you know the reason. As a side note, every scrap of green in the border has appeared in another quilt beginning with my first. It was fun to be reminded of those as I worked on the blocks piecing and quilting.

Before the wedding I drew leaf shapes on assorted green fabric. These were put in a zip-lock along with a sign marker and that plus a clipboard covered in sandpaper were passed to my husband and Nikko (yes, the dog was invited too) and their duty was to get signatures of all the guests. Those leaves were appliqued on the vine in the inner border.

The Lone Star is a typical motif of Native American celebratory quilts. All three of us are members of the Order of the Arrow, an honor society within the BSA which is based on Indian lore and theme. The groom particularly loves Kokopelli so I gave him a triangle of paper and asked him to draw one to fit the shape. It is quilted into the triangles formed by the stars.


The four square segments are quilted with the BSA logo,

The SAJ (Scout Association of Japan) logo, The groom's family crest of two crossed feathers, and the character for long life.

The reverse side of the quilt is made up of Japanese tenugui, a dyed cotton towel. These are often made to commemorate events or places and an art form in themselves. They are dyed similar to batik so are reversible and the cotton is soft yet strong.

Among these are many Kabuki theme towels as the bride has done the English earphone guide for Kabuki for many years. There is even one of the Kabuki-za, the building which is now being torn down and rebuilt. Some other towels are auspicious for celebratory occasions like cranes or shochikubai (pine, plum, and bamboo) and there is one from the BSN (Boy Scouts of Nippon which changed to Scout Association of Japan when girls were added to packs and troops.

My plan for this quilt was to have both the front and the back without any definite top or bottom. The size is seven feet four inches square and can be rotated for even wear as I know it will be used and cherished for many years. If you think the colors strange for a wedding quilt, when I asked my friend what colors she liked, she said her husband loves warm fall colors.I hope she does too but it shows what kind of friend she is.

So here is a picture from "The wedding of the bears". Note the bride and groom decoration in front.

And here is the matron of honor, in my comfortable native regalia, standing with my assistant outside my front garden bed at the end of a very happy day.

Note that the bride asked that my bouquet be something "wild" or "natural".

There is a poem that goes:

"It is my joy in life to find, At every turning of the road, The strong arm of a comrade, kind, To help me onward with my load. But since I have no gold to give, and love alone must make amends, the only prayer is, while I live, God make me worthy of my friends."
I pray, too, this quilt will be found worthy of this friendship.

Still shaking ..or..quake + 4 weeks

Slowly slowly slowly the quilting continues.

This old wall clock hangs in the corner of my living room and counts down the hours with a clanging chime. A few decades older than I am, it has felt many quakes over the years and usually carries on it's business without complaint only asking to be wound every 7 to 10 days. The past weeks it has been busy at it's hidden agenda, to judge the extent of each quake and after-shock. "Is that a quake I feel? Couldn't be very bad, the clock is still ticking." Well, it was on the job last night ... maybe a bit behind in the time but so am I . (might have something to do with age)


At the time I had been listening to a couple of feral cats loudly fighting? courting? serenading? the neighborhood. Their audience temporarily distracted by the noisy shaking of buildings, they stopped. Interestingly, less than a minute after the quake ended, they resumed their yowling as if nothing had happened.

I thought how like Japan these cats are. The trains stop. The TV programing switches to warning mode. Power goes off. People stop what they are doing ... and check the clock... then slowly things return to normal (or the NEW normal) and life goes on. Like much of life you have no control over anything except how you react to the situation. Today my dog lies in the entryway, the very place she was terrified to be twice in four weeks, and life goes on as usual.