Tis Finished!

 Finished at last

I'm about to head out to conquer a busy day, but I wanted to be sure and post the final pictures of the finished chuppah that I made for the wedding of a friend which we recently got back from in DC. I've discovered that it's difficult to fully appreciate a piece this large in a photograph, but hopefully these give you an idea of how it turned out! I am so relievedhappycontent to have finished it at last and to have seen it used and loved. That is, after all, what makes working on something like this worthwhile.

Disheveled from dancing I think, my husband and I on the right with the bride and groom

I have some pretty big ongoing quilt projects, but in terms of hand embroidery, this is definitely the biggest I have ever done and probably ever will do at 6 x 6 feet. I couldn't take photos during the ceremony but got this one afterwards and am eagerly waiting to see what the official photographer got.

After the beautiful ceremony that was right on the Potomac River

The chuppah uses my own drawing of the "tree of life" motif and incorporates the style of havdalah candles and the groom's celtic heritage in the spirals of the trunk. All elements were coordinated with the wedding colors and outlined in hand embroidery: the leaves in a full stranded split stitch, the berries and text ("I am my beloved and he is mine") in full stranded backstitch, and the roots, trunk, and branches and a double stranded stem stitch using two different colors of floss. I was surprised that the stitching on the trunk was as quick as lightning but those leaves took me forever because of the need to constantly rethread and take smaller, more intricate split stitches.

The bride, a former graphic design colleague of mine, did all the letterpressed invites herself(!) to coordinate with my tree of life drawing so of course we had to get a photo of that too. You can just see the debossed tree and foliage gracing the edges of these and I love how well they complement each other—gotta love continuity in design!

You can find info on making your own chuppah, read more about this one, and see the entire year-long process that went into creating this piece here:
Big Plans
How to: French Seams
Preparing the Canvas
Stitch Progress

time to celebrate!

the invitations that we collaborated on and made ourselves

what a whirlwind the past few days have been! we've just gotten back from our wedding reception at my parent's farm in michigan and it was a really wonderful time indeed. so much preparation went into it with the help of our family and friends...so thankful for all their helping hands and a bit dazed now that it's all said and done and we are back home on the east coast once again.

don't hate me, i know i have so much to catch you up on and so many photos to share! goodness, this wedding stuff really has eaten into my blogging time, haha. not to fear, i think i can finally breathe again now and forge ahead!


do you like the invites? john and i had a blast designing them and making them together right down the the envelopes made from up-cycled chinese take-out bags. ah yes, we do eat quite a lot of chinese take-out i have to admit!

our wedding invites

so i have begun creating our own invitations for the party that we'll have once we get back from our honeymoon/eloping trip. so far i have traced and cut out 75 envelopes from old grocery bags and 25 envelope liners...only 25 or so more to go! and yes, my hands hurt but i guess that the old adage is true in this case when it comes to saving money: no pain, no gain! i just thank god we both have graphic design experience, good taste, and an epson home printer, haha.


we never really had a color theme so we just built a palette around the stamps we liked most. i never had any little girl dreams of what my wedding would be like but for some reason i do remember thinking, "i really hope the stamp design is not dumb the year i get married." well, we totally lucked out with the king and queen of hearts design! thank you postal system for working in my favor for once!


we are going to use the bluebird colored paper for the invites and then just some normal white computer paper we already have to print hotel, map, and registry info. i know, i know it's supposedly not polite to put registry info in wedding invites anymore but personally i think that's just silly (this is me spitting me tongue out at you lords of wedding etiquette!) and besides, this is more like a shower than an actual wedding anyway. plus we are going to have people rsvp via email so no wasted paper and stamps for that, making them even more budget and eco friendly!

finally, we'll use the candy-cane striped yarn (i could not find baker's twine!) to tie together all the different elements and seal the envelopes shut with the bright orange wax since homemade envelopes don't have their own stickum of course. well that and i love sealing wax, how can you not? i'm still on the lookout for the stamp itself though, just not thoroughly in love with what we've found so far.


if you have an extra second, you should totally check out these invite designs which you could really use for so many different things. if i had money, i certainly would :)

printed handkerchiefs via 100 layer cake and lucky luxe
embroidered wedding invites via readymade and rifle paper co.