Alice's Quilt: Bob Holds the Key to my Heart!

Bob and I celebrated our 60^th anniversary in Michigan this summer with three of our four grandchildren, our daughter, and two sons–in-law.  We went to a lovely, quiet restaurant with scenic views for a delicious dinner. Then we came home to cut our anniversary cake.

 I decided that this KEY theme was a perfect way to honor my husband and our many years together!  The photo of us cutting our cake at the wedding reception in 1959 is superimposed on a heart, and then a smaller picture of the cake cutting at the 60^th celebration is superimposed on it.  Tied atop the photos is what else but a key!  I added two additional hearts with two other recent pictures of Bob that I particularly like.

Further carrying out the KEY theme are the four small background blocks.  These are pieced in batiks using a log cabin variation called the Greek Key.  This is an ancient design that dates back centuries and can be found in floor tiles, rugs, ribbons, other decorative trim, and jewelry just to name a few.  By a stroke of good luck, I found directions for making the Greek Key block in one of my quilting books, Judy Martin’s Log Cabin Quilt Book.  One of Martin’s quilts in this book has a medallion center that contains four Greek Key Blocks, and the border repeats these blocks.

After constructing the quilt, I machine quilted with a meandering stitch in the light areas of the Greek Key blocks.  I fused the hearts and the photos onto the background with Wonder Under.  Then I stitched around these in a tiny zigzag stitch using red thread.  I echoed the red in the binding.

And so my quilt:  Bob Holds the Key to My Heart!