60th Wedding Anniversary wallhanging

This morning I finished an anniversary gift for a dear friend and her husband.  

I wasn’t sure what the 60th anniversary was, so I did some research and found it is the Diamond Anniversary.  There are no colors or flowers associated with it.  There is a rose named “Diamond” which is lavender in color.  That’s where I started.

I knew I wanted to use their wedding picture (the invitation to their celebration is printed on the back of a wedding picture). I searched though EQ7 looking for diamond inspiration.

As usual, I don’t remember where I started in EQ, I think there must have been a block with the diamonds.  I knew the size of the photo I would print on photo fabric.  From there I needed to fit the diamonds with that size.  I also printed the dates, and their names.

I added some lines around the diamonds to add a little interest, then also to the corner squares.

She still teaches piano in her home throughout the school year. I wasn’t sure about a piano keyboard, so I did an image search, found what I was looking for, imported it into EQ, and traced it for the block I wanted.

I looked at the quilt store for fabric, lavender with metallic silver something in it.  No luck. I searched for the colors of Norway (she is of Norwegian descent)–red, green, yellow and blue.  I found a Christmas print with 3 of the 4 colors AND musical notes!!I took a fat quarter of that for the backing.

I used white-on-white for the white piano keys, the side diamonds, the triangles surrounding all the diamonds, and the two bottom corner blocks. For the black piano keys I used some shiny-silky black fabric I found in a drawer. The other black was another piece in a drawer, with some swirly lines which, to my eye, looked sorta-kinda like musical notes.

I probably should have paper-pieced the piano keys, but I didn’t (I don’t like paper-piecing). The black keys are a quarter inch wide, with both seam allowance pressed behind the keys.

I quilted it all with stitch-in-the-ditch.  Not my favorite kind of quilting–I can’t stay in the ditch.  Those crooked keys really bother me, but I know we quilters are our own worst enemies when it comes to quality of our work.  Hopefully it won’t bother anyone else as it bothers me.

For the binding I used the swirly fabric, and it’s done, waiting to mail tomorrow.

Now on to the next project!