The Thursday before the wedding we met up at the Ramada in downtown Vancouver to start gathering squares together and deciding on what the layout would be. (We had an excellent stay at the Ramada, but the rooms were very small. Especially with several adults and a quilt-in-progress sharing the space.) We knew there were another 15 or so squares to come, so we were aware it might change a bit, but we were able to start sewing some of the squares together. We also realized that we would need a couple of other squares, so Marg started knitting again.
Of course, lots of people had been knitting, and some of them were not who you'd expect. Here are Jeffy and Neva working on their team square back in Kingston...
...and of course, the famous picture of Keith knitting at the graduation ceremony on Wednesday.
Apparently at the rehearsal dinner, Kyle was looking through the pics from grad on Tory's camera and saw this one. "Dad was knitting?!" he said. For a moment, we thought the jig was up, but Katelyn nonchalantly said that she had been doing some knitting and that Keith wanted to learn, and they thought they'd better take a picture. Luckily that seemed to be enough for Kyle, though he was a bit distraught to think that grad was that boring.
Friday morning, assembly began in earnest.
An early layout:
Last minute knitting by Jean...
...Marg working on the last square...
...Tory stitching...
...and Ewan supervising.
Donna arrived to show off her mad sewing skillz...
...and Don did the most important job, so that we could all use both of our hands for construction.
Sewing up continued throughout the afternoon, and Kathy's squares arrived at the hotel that evening. Kathy had called in reinforcements in the form of her Auntie Elsie, age 86, who helped get both Kathy and Hayley on track...
...and Kathy used her drive in the van to the wedding very productively.
Squares were stealthily handed over at the barbecue at Jericho Beach, and Jean finished up her family's unfinished squares while at the airport waiting for Brenda, Eddie and John's delayed flight. After dinner out with Don, Marg finished sewing the neutrals together, leaving us with just a little more than half of the quilt to finish up Saturday morning.
Saturday Jeffy and Don were put in charge of child care and Mom and I really turned on the juice with the stitching. There was a brief moment of panic when we could only find one wool needle; the housekeeping staff had moved it, but luckily it was found and we could both work at the same time. We took a break to have our hair done with Tory, Katelyn, Neva and Jean, and received the last of the squares at the salon, only hours before the wedding. It was our goal to be done by 3pm, and we beat that time by half an hour. It got folded up and wrapped, and we were ready to rock.
We were pretty pleased with how it turned out.
(If you're at all interested in seeing a schematic of who made what square on the blanket, you can click here. Props to Jeffy for creating the digital version of the quilt.)
1 comment:
Wow. I can't remember if I actually said this when we received the gift, but it occurred to me that I thought it must've been an incredible amount of work and organization, but that I probably didn't really comprehend everything that went into the blanket.
I was right.
Thank you so much.
It's been great to read the blog and see the pics. I'm also really grateful for the digital schematic, as we've been wondering who did what square as we often try to guess as we use the blanket.
Thank you for all the love.
Kyle
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