One the 2nd Monday of most months our guild meets at A Scarlet Thread (my local quilt shop) to work on Quilts of Valor. I have completed 4 and have another one my design wall. I've blogged about them before, but since I just started blogging again after a long hiatus, and since my previous blogs are currently missing the photos, I'll post here a picture of the ones I've done so far. I do the piecing and binding, and one of our guild members does the long-arm quilting on them.
This was my first one, completed in July 2011. It is using Bonnie Hunter's Starstruck pattern.
The next one I made was this one from a pattern by Laura's Quilt Lakeside that is distributed by A Scarlet Thread. I turned it in at the March 2012 meeting.
The next QOV quilt I made was this one using the "Big" Star Quilt pattern from Country Threads. Our group has made several of these. We adjust the pattern a bit to fit within the range of the QOV size requirements. I started working on this one in October 2012 and turned it in at the January '13 meeting.
The 4th one I completed was partially made by one of the other members of our group. I added about 1/2 of the stars and put them together. This pattern we call Floating Stars - a adaptation of a pattern from McCall's Quick Quilts July '05 issue. I turned it in at the February '13 meeting.
I am working on another one of the Big Star Quilts now, using the same fabrics. Since the center of it is a square we have to add some at the top and bottom to make it fit within the range of sizes for a QOV. Depending on how much fabric I have left of these pieces the top and bottom inserts might end up being a different size or arrangement.
Yesterday we worked on making the 10th Anniversary Block, honoring the 10 years of Quilts of Valor. There were 8 of us there and we had 30 made by the end of our 5 hours. When we make a QOV we also have to make a pillowcase as a presentation case, so I have made 4 of those as well. I have hand-sewn the binding on a couple of others, and took one that was donated to us and removed the binding and replaced it with a better choice. I frequently see another pattern with stars of some kind in it that I add to the collection of ones I want to do for QOV, and I still have a lot of red, white and blue fabrics, so it looks like I will continue with this project for awhile.
At the March guild meeting my long-arm quilter friend returned my Orange Crush Mystery. I have blogged about this one before. I started this Bonnie Hunter mystery in March 2008 and finished the top in time to take it back to my old guild in Lexington, VA, when Bonnie came there to teach a class in February 2011. Unlike most of my quilt projects, this one was not for anyone in particular; it does not really fit in my color scheme in our house, but I am so far unwilling to give it up either. I gave it to my quilter friend in February, and have now finished the binding on it. It may be hard to tell from the pictures, but the binding is made from all of the blues that are the centers of the orange blocks.
The orange, green and black fabrics are constant throughout the quilt and the rest is very scrappy. I think Bonnie used red where my green is, but I love this combination and knew a long time ago I wanted to bind it in the bright medium blues from the orange centers.
I should add here that the way I am adding photos to the blog now is SO simple! If I had realized that way back I would have had a much easier time of it! Before, I was doing some kind of convoluted thing with loading my pictures to Webshots, then copying the code from there for a small size to put in the HTML code for the blog -- then Webshots went to subscription only and so all my links to those pictures were lost. I still have them on my computer, but adding them all back in will be a long-term thing. I might still do it, because the main reason for my blog is to keep a record of what I am doing for myself, but adding those photos back in will be a bother.
Less than 3 weeks ago our guild got a request to make some Quilts of Valor for a group of 30 injured Marines who recently returned from Afghanistan to Camp Lejeune, NC. A week or two before that we had been sent 20 blocks from the Just One Star project that Moda promoted with a request to complete a quilt using them and adding sashing, borders and backing. The gal who got the request and I had both contributed blocks to that project - here are mine.
Moda wanted enough stars to make 100 quilts, using 18 stars per quilt. It is our understanding that they got about 12,000 blocks -- so they have farmed them out to various state organizations for further distribution. I've searched but have not found any information to confirm that number. Also, not sure my guild friend got info about finishing the particular quilt shown on the Moda page. Anyhow, she got permission from the person sending her the blocks for us to use the blocks she received to make a quilt for our specific request.
We scheduled an emergency sew-in for July 13 at our local quilt shop - A Scarlet Thread. There were probably 15-20 of us there during some part of the day - this is out of a guild of 35-40 members - good turnout I'd say. Our plan was to send as many as we could collect by that Friday (July 15) and then send more by today. I did not have any red, white and blue quilts finished, or started, to contribute, but I do have lots of red, white and blue fabrics. For our particular project they were willing to take some that were not those colors, but they did want them to be no longer 70" with a width of 55-65", so I still didn't have anything finished to contribute. On Monday night I started looking for a pattern to use to make one from scratch. I looked at some that had larger blocks, but didn't find anything that struck my fancy. Eventually decided on Bonnie Hunter's Starstruck pattern. I had made a few blocks for another charity quilt using this pattern and really liked how it turned out. Unfortunately, it takes 16 pieces to make one 8" block and I thought I needed to make it 7 rows by 8 rows with one border. Hard to believe now, but I got enough pieces cut to make all those blocks out of my red, white and blue scraps, and to make two blocks to see how I liked the pattern. That is about 900 pieces cut in 2 nights. I must say here that although I am retired, and would therefore appear to have plenty of quilting time, my husband is now also retired and has lots of ideas about things he wants us to be doing - and none of them have anything to do with quilting! So mostly my quilting time comes after dinner and into the wee hours of the morning. Most nights during this project I was up until at least 1:30, and several nights it was 3:00-3:30.
On the Emergency Sew-In Day I managed to get two rows of 7 blocks each sewn together - that was with my being there from 10:30 - 7:00. So, only 1/4 of the blocks done - still lots to do. I let the leader of this project know that I wouldn't have it done by that Friday, but promised I'd get it done before today. After auditioning a single dark blue border I decided to put 2 borders on instead - a narrow red one and a wider dark blue one. That would allow me to only have 7 rows of 6 stars each, so it would take less time to make the 8" blocks. Of course now I have lots of extra pieces cut, but ... so be it.
After staying up several nights til at least 1:30 and sometimes as late as 3:30 I had the top finished, and the backing sewn together, in time to take them to the leader of this project the following Friday, July 22, so she could give it to the guild member who had agreed to do the quilting on it. The quilter was able to give it back to me on Sunday afternoon, and I added the binding, which I had made earlier, stitched down the binding and added the official QOV label by Tuesday night. I also made the required matching pillowcase for it, and washed the quilt, also required by the Quilts of Valor program. Here are pictures of the finished quilt front
and back,
a close-up of the quilting that was done on it,
the pillowcase,
and the label.
A word about the pillowcase - it is really pretty easy to make. I followed this pattern on About.com Quilting. It looks really neat when it is done by the special trick with the cuff, and the French seams stitched on the one side and bottom. I used some of one of the reds from the top for the narrow contrasting flange; the cuff is made from the backing material, which is an official QOV fabric. The body of the pillowcase and the inner border may also be official Quilt of Valor fabrics but I can't say for sure - they are definitely patriotic though. The labels can be purchased in panels of several at quilt shops that carry the QOV fabrics. The binding fabric is also patriotic, and may be a QOV fabric. I made it using the continuous bias process described in this video - I love the way striped fabric done this way turn out to be diagonal!
