white wedding

We went to a wedding this past weekend, which we'd known about for ages, of course. When we got the invitation months ago, I remember thinking that I should go and check out the registry right away so I'd have the best choice of gifts. There is a Macy's less than 6 miles away from our house, after all.

The days passed. Days and days. Days turning into weeks. Lots and lots of weeks.

So when I finally got to the mall five days before the day of the wedding, almost everything on the registry had already been purchased by other guests. Big, fat, bummer! Most of the items that were left were quite out of our budget, or just weren't things that I felt good about giving. I mean, I simply cannot stick a package of 2 standard-size pillowcases (not even king-sized!) into a gift box and cheerfully present it to the bride and groom, even if said pillowcases do cost $99. Almost three digits for, what, two yards of fabric? Sorry, just can't do it.

So, after finding some piecemeal items remaining on the registry from the Martha Stewart collection, including a wire breadbasket, I decided to supplement and personalize the gift with a handmade basket liner.

I took a piece of linen that was roughly 19" square and ironed a narrow double hem (about a quarter inch) all the way around. Then topstitched that with my sewing machine, which, much to my amazement, turned out pretty darn near invisible.

Then I used a size 7 steel crochet hook and single crocheted all. the. way. around. the square, about an eighth of an inch (or less) apart, with three single crochets at each corner. Then I used Trim #21 in the the book 150 Crochet Trims by Susan Smith, called Iris Edge, which is basically 2dc, 1ch, 2dc in every fourth single crochet. The corners aren't exactly the neatest, but since I started this on Thursday, and the wedding was Saturday, I was pretty happy with the way it came out. I was also going to do some embroidered initials on the corners, but some people don't like monograms very much, so I decided to just call it finished.

It was a beautiful ceremony, and a fun, well-done party afterwards, though I got incredibly sad and almost started crying at the reception. Maybe it was hormones, or the heat and fatigue of the day, or probably the idealistic romanticism contrasted with the starkness and bluntness of real life. But anyway, the girls had an absolute blast. We literally had to drag them off the dance floor. They are going to be serious clubbers when they get older (hopefully much, much older). Jessie kept everyone in stitches, with her stylin' moves and energy. She flung herself around with abandon and dropped one boy (4 years old) for another (6 years old) for her uncle (39 years old) for her grandpa (74) for her great uncle (76 or so). Guess she likes older men!

September 2014