My version of the wedding guest book

You may be asking yourselves, "What does Jamie do with her life when Kevin is not around?" Or you may not even care, which is more likely. In case you're bored, I'll tell you. I do pretty much anything that reminds me of Kevin or involves getting ready for our wedding, etc. I'm a bit obsessed with the fact that I'm getting married in 3 months, but isn't that how a bride-to-be should be? (Nod head now.)

This is an idea I got for our wedding guest book, and the beginning stages of the idea came in the form of sketches on scratch paper during Sacrament Meeting -- hee hee. It was going to be a quilt, and the guests at our wedding would write their names on oversized buttons which would be incorporated into the quilt, and displayed as a wall-hanging in our home to remind us of the special day.
I made friends with the local quilting store (The Silver Thimble) manager, who talked things through with me, listened to my idea and helped me decide how many yards of each color of fabric I would need. I told Kevin that this woman is to me what the local fly shop manager is to him. The idea evolved little by little, and I took pictures of it in its several stages.

I sewed the green fabric around the edges of the off-white fabric to make a border and then colored a black line all the way around the inside with black conte (like a soft pastel mixed with a crayon). It needed a little more "pop". I used the small black and cream floral print fabric to make the corners more interesting, and colored behind each piece with charcoal before hand-sewing the pieces to the background.

After comparing a lot of fonts on the computer, I chose one that looked like the perfect blend of casual and cursive, printed it off in a very large font and then traced it onto the fabric with permanent marker.

Then I decided it needed a bit more shading so I filled in more of the white space with some charcoal, and added our wedding date.

The friendly staff at Triple S Building Supply (Service, Savings, Satisfaction) helped me figure out the best way to mount this piece of fabric. I decided I didn't want to quilt it anymore, but to stretch it around something like a piece of wood. They made the genius suggestion of foam. It's stiff, but lightweight. That meant I could secure the fabric to it with straight pins instead of worrying about hammer and nails or a staple gun.

There's a closeup of one of the corners after having the fabric trimmed and pinned to the foam. The only thing left was to cover the edges for a clean, finished look.

Thanks to Ginn at JoAnn Fabrics, I decided on a satin ribbon and upholstery tacks. The ribbon is duct taped to the back of the foam, then wrapped around the edges and pinned to the front with black upholstery tacks.

And the finished product (minus the buttons) -- which looks crooked in this picture, but it's only because my camera has a wide-angle lens and if you take pictures too up close, it has a fish-bowl effect. Now it just needs to be hung up on a wall in my apartment. It's part of the home makeover I'm doing before Kevin comes to live with me in December. Yay!

84 more days 'til the wedding, but who's counting?