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Monday, September 17, 2012

Red, White and Blue flag quilt...

This is a great flag quilt. Tiny tiny piecing! What a great keepsake.   Elaine from Summer Crafter made this great quilt. I love her blog name, she is a teacher, so saves most of her crafting for summertime! Here are some awesome finishes, love them! Elaine also has a shop for some great crafts here.
You're a grand old flag, you're a high flying flag
And forever in peace may you wave.
You're the emblem of the land I love,
Home of the free and the brave...

I wanted to make a hanging flag quilt for my dad who immigrated here in the 60's. He loves the USA! We love the USA. I wanted to keep it simple, use small pieces and try something new. This was the original drawing a couple of months ago.  That was the plan....


Then I got the Riley BlakeStars and Stripes collection.


And everything changed from there! Look at these neat patterns and colors.... the pinwheels!!


I decided to fussy cut these, yes 50 of them, and alternate them with 49 blue squares for the blue part of the flag. The pinwheels are about 1 1/2 inches so the actual size when sewn is 1 inch. Perfect. 

It only took me 2 hours to cut all these tiny squares! Truly a labor of love...


Then I thought, how in the world am I going to arrange these? In what order? Aren't quilts supposed to have repeating patterns? Well, amazingly enough, while  "playing with the squares" a pattern emerged, actually a couple. VOILA!!  OK lots.  It was quite dizzying...




For the 13 stripes I planned to cut rectangles in the reds and also in the whites and assemble them in rows 1 1/2 by 2 1/2 inches. If you are going to quilt the "Grand Ole' Flag" you better get the details right! (Although mixing it up is fun too!)  Unfortunately, I cut all the little rectangles the wrong size and had to "re-invent" the pattern and there went the 13 stripes idea.


TIP: Never cut fabric when:
1. You are upset
2. Distracted
3. Annoyed
4. Sad
5. Frustrated
6. Emotional in any way.
But I think, considering the huge Faux Pas .... I managed to salvage the thing!





I quilted the "star" section in diagonals and the stripes part in "waves."
 My dad said "How will they know it's not Coca-Cola?" 
Very Funny.



I added 2 loops on the back with Grossgrain ribbon for hanging.




He was speechless, except for the Coca-Cola remark
and counted to make sure there were fifty stars. : )



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7 comments:

Kristan said...

Beautiful quilt, Elaine! The cutting mistake turned into a really happy accident!

Sheila said...

I Agree. Beautiful Quilt!

Wacky Woman said...

I love everything about this quilt!

RobotMomSews said...

This is such a cute quilt! I love the Coca-Cola remark...only cuz I'm a huge coke fan. :) It's a beautiful quilt! Great job!

Little Penpen said...

How beautiful...I like dad's sense of humor! I'm sure he truly loves his USA quilt!! I would!

Elaine said...

Thanks for telling my "quilt story" and for all the lovely comments. This was fun and today my blog is one year old! What a great present!!

Celtic Thistle said...

Gorgeous quilt, great story!