Laura & Gabe's Wedding Quilt

For the past 18-20 years I've met on Thursdays with a group of quilting friends. We call ourselves The Grateful Threads. Threadheads, Threadlets...Sydney is often referred to as the "Snippet." The membership of this group has changed and morphed over the years. I guess I'm the only original local member left. Bev and Judy have moved to Oregon. About a year after we started Lynn and her sister Ann joined. We've had others move in and out of the group and seen a second generation of quilters join. There are now eight local members and two out-of-towners. We run block swaps between us and have a tradition of making quilts for members at special times in their lives. Weddings especially. Laura is currently working full time and going to college full time so in the past year she hasn't been around on Thursday nights much....that is, until we decided to make a quilt to celebrate her marriage to Gabe.
When we make a special quilt we gather up all our orphan blocks and fit them together and they turn out beautiful. This time though we wanted a plan. So everyone was given 1/2 yard of the turquoise batik background. Instructions were to use it and our "theme" was turquoise and purple. Use mainly batiks and what would look good with the theme colors. Ann and Bev sent blocks. We each made some blocks, some "filler" shapes (checkerboards, flying geese, half square triangles, pinwheels, etc). What problems did we encounter? Mostly that Laura suddenly seemed to have every Thursday night free.....I don't know how many times we had to scamper to cover blocks, half-sewn rows, entire tops! Liz and Larissa spent hours quilting it. Sydney had been sworn to secrecy. She wanted to know why we were keeping it a secret from Laura but even today when I was finishing the binding at the store she told me she had a plan on where to hide the quilt if Laura popped into Redwood Sewing Center.
We have two block swaps going right now....One in Civil War fabrics with block from The Civil War Diary Quilt and one with 1930's fabrics from The Farmers Wife Quilt Book. To be festive with our swap we decided to meet at Babetta's Italian Restaurant. (Yum...Chicken Picatta is South Beach Friendly and I always get it....sooo good.) After exchanging our blocks and oohing and ahhhing over them we said we had more blocks to exchange. Laura looked worried as if she'd forgotten something. I said I had blocks to exchange, Lynn said it too and then all chimed in about blocks to give away. I carried the card and bag to Laura and we all said, "Happy Wedding!" It was great.....she cried!
And here she is with a great big smile with her quilt. Can you find the cat block Sydney helped me make (her idea) and their dog too.