The Chuppah, Part 1

The wedding fast approaches, less than two months away.   A very important element in a Jewish wedding is the Chuppah – the wedding canopy. It symbolizes the home the couple will build together. It is supposed to be a temporary structure under the open sky.This is from my son and daughter in laws’ wedding last year. When you get married on the beach in the Dominican Republic, it is light and airy with an unbelievable backdrop of blue ocean and paraglider thrown in for free.

Yoch knew he was going to quilt his own chuppah long before Yish popped the question. There was going to be green, green, green! His favorite color balanced with black white and grey.  So a year ago, when the candy ring was offered (that is a different story, a real ring was produced eventually, but the proposal happened with a candy ring), Yoch set to work on piecing the chuppah.

This design is completely his own, although it is one that should be copied.I am so impressed with this design, simple use of the triangle, the offsetting of the center motif and how it grows. The use of light and dark – perfection.

Yoch welcomed my contribution to the corners. I’ve been paper piecing lately and yes, these corner pieces are a little busier than the overall quilt. But hey,  let’s spice things up a bit.

I was also given the task of quilting this. Yay for new sewing machine! This is the first large project I have quilted on the Juki and I am so pleased with the results.Luckily I have a large living room and have the space to lay this all out. Talk about large!  78″ x 85″.  Yoch pieced the back out of all the leftover fabric. This one is pin basted.  I’m thinking I should have used more pins.

The quilting has to be simple. First of all the design speaks for itself, second, fancy quilting would get lost. So The green got Horizontal lines and the black got vertical. Yes, I did this free hand, no walking foot here, since I was changing directions – going back and forth within the long strips of color. I used Aurifil thread, grey for the black/grey areas and green for the green.The one area where a quilting design would shine was the border. I took my time and followed the good advice of FMQ, practice first on paper, get the hand used to the motion.I marked the circles, I’m not looking for perfection, but some guildlines are a good help. At the recent quilt show I bought a wonderful new tool, the Bohin Chalk Pencil.  What a difference it makes! And here they are, on the quilt.  Not perfect but a good start. I would like to get better and that will happen with time and practice.

That’s it for part one, more work to do and I will share more of this Chuppah.