50th Wedding Anniversary Quilt

My family recently traveled up to Delaware to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party.  The party also served as a family reunion and it was exciting to see so many of my relatives together (my family is very spread out across the US).

For their anniversary gift, I made them a king sized quilt for their bed.  My mother like more modern designs and requested something in blacks, whites, and grays to go with their bedroom.

This is my first king size quilt I have made, an enormous 112" x 98".

Sorry for the lack of a better photo, taking pictures of a quilt this huge proved to be very challenging as it did not fit on my quilt stand.

I went through many different iterations and different designs including some designs with curves, paper piecing, and improv before I settled on a quilt based on equilateral triangles.  I thought that the triangles gave the design a modern and classic look.

I used my technique of Subtracting for Minimalism (I'll be teaching this method at QuiltCon 2019 and I also offer it as a 3 and 6 hour workshop for guilds) to come up with the design.  I wanted the affect of the middle having more white/gray prints and fading to black along the top and bottom.

Here was the rendering I made in EQ8 to figure out sizing and fabric placement:

I cut the triangles 8 ½" (the largest my ruler would go) to minimize the amount of triangles I needed (I still used over 200).  I thought that the larger triangles would scale nicely with the size of the bed.

I was able to use some of my special, hand printed fabrics in the quilt.  Here was a triangle made using some fabric that I created the screen print and printed in Karen Lewis's QuiltCon 2018 class.

Here is some fabric that I printed using a pre-made screen at a workshop hosted by my quilting friend Faye.

The piecing on this enormous quilt was actually not too bad because the larger triangles made the quilt top come together pretty easily.  I had planned on quilting the quilt myself, but admit that the huge size was really daunting.  I think that I would have had to take out all of the furniture from my family room just to have a space to baste the quilt :)

Right as I was working sewing the rows of triangles together, I received an e-mail from Jennifer Istok of Knotted Thread (Instagram, Etsy shop) about a Christmas in July quilting sale.  The sale offered an excellent pricing on quilting a Christmas themed quilt and an additional quilt so I jumped on it.  Jennifer said she could quilt my quilts in a tight time frame and she did an amazing job.  

Super quick, Jennifer had my parents' quilt back with the most amazing meandering feather quilting pattern.  The light gray thread blends in well on the white/gray prints and stands out on the black areas.

My parents loved their new quilt and I think that it looks great in their room :)

QUILT STATS

   Name: Parents 50th Anniversary Quilt

   Designed by: Cheryl Brickey using the Subtracting for Minimalism technique

   Size: 112" x 98"

   Fabrics: Assorted white, gray, and black prints on a Kona black background.

   Quilted by: Jennifer Istok of Knotted Thread

   Quilting Design: Meandering feathers