Jardim da Amizade: {r}Evolution of A Quilt

The world is but a canvas to the imagination. –Henry David Thoreau

I've been wanting to show you/off this quilt for a long time. Let's pretend it is the beginning of September again. When we left off, I'd just shown the completed signature quilt that was for a wonderful lady who had just turned 100. A dear neighbor, who has a long-arm, offered to do the machine quilting, so we're going to jump back a little further to the last week of August while the signature quilt was out for quilting. I received word in mid-August that some very special friends were coming from Brasil to visit, that they would be here for only a short window of time and that there was going to be a get-together on October 3^rd. The gears in my brain began to turn and as soon as I dropped the signature quilt off with the lady who had volunteered to quilt it, I pulled out a bunch of half-square triangles I've had hanging about for a while and got to work.

Fast forward to October 3^rd, and voilà. Jardim da Amizade, which translates directly as Garden of Friendship, but it is more comfortable to say Friendship Garden.

I took my inspiration {and this photo} from Wendy Sheppard at Ivory Spring. She is a truly amazing quilter. When I saw her quilt, I knew I wanted to make one of my own. I adapted the design, making my quilt square {I love square quilts}, rather than rectangular and my HSTs are 2" rather than Wendy's 1½" {can you imagine!}. Here's another little tidbit about Wendy's quilt; it took her only 5 days from start to finish.

Color Burst by Wendy Sheppard
Image Source

Wendy was inspired by the quilt below, which is on display at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, DC. I did some quick maths and there are 1,200 small half-square triangles in this quilt, all hand-pieced. Wow!

Old Maid's Ramble on display at the DAR Museum
Image Source

When I got the newsletter from my favorite local quilt shop the other day, I was delighted by another variation of this quilt. Aren't the colors beautiful? It is done in Moda's Lakeside Gatherings fabric line, and I love this take on the design.

Ladies on the Lake by Suzanne
at Corn Wagon Quilt Co.
Image Source

I had the greater part of the half-square triangles I used in my quilt already pieced when I decided to make this quilt. Some of them were even pressed open. The rest were ready and waiting to be pieced. I finished piecing those while the signature quilt was out for quilting, and as soon as that quilt was finished and delivered, I started piecing blocks of half-square triangles. It was a crazy undertaking to try and get this quilt done in such a short amount of time while juggling a full-time job, full-time mom and wife duties and a busy volunteer job at church. More than once I said, I don't know if I"m going to get this done. But I have to try.

I worked color by color and tried not to repeat any one print in each block. I wanted to photograph each block as I went, but it was hard to align my crazy schedule with good lighting as the days grew shorter. And I decided that I'd better spend every spare minute working on the piecing.

I like to do an embroidered label on the back of my quilts, but there just wasn't enough time for this one. Instead I used a permanent, archival quality pen and wrote my label out. I included a quote from Alfred Tennyson, If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.

Melissa Kelley at Sew Shabby Quilting saved my bacon again and did yet another rush quilting job for me. After an all-nighter, Mr. Bug dropped the quilt off on a Tuesday morning on his way to work and Melissa had it ready for me on Wednesday evening, just in time for Mr. Bug to pick it up on his way home. She did a beautiful job on an edge-to-edge computerized floral design. I love the way it turned out. I then spent every second I could getting the binding on and hand-stitched to the back.

That week is kind of of a blur, but I'm pretty sure that Mr. Bug and the Not-So-Little Bugs ate a lot of cereal and take-out pizza. I didn't get much sleep and I was pretty useless at work. It was close, but I finished in time to take it to the get-together on Friday night. These are my Brasilian "parents," João Roberto {John Robert} and Maria Lúcia. I respect, admire and love them so much and it was so good to see them again!


This is the first quilt I've done that came completely from my stash. Granted, I did a swap for about half of the little half-square triangles, but all of the fabric I used for the swap came out of my stash and the ones I got back have been sitting in a drawer for so long that they count as stash by default. I did go and buy a piece of Kona in a sort of grayish-blue for the backing, but when I got it home, it wasn't quite right. I had a large quantity of Kona in Coal from a project that will probably never get off the ground, so the blue I bought {I think the color was Rain or Fog or something} went to stash {and is now being used in the next project I'm working on, which is another quilt made entirely from stash and which I hope to show you sooner than four months after it is finished and given away!}.

Other fun facts about this quilt:
• It has 640 small half-square triangles
• The total number of triangles {large and small} is 1,344
• The quilt measures 68" x 68"
• I'm going to make at least one more quilt like this because I'm slightly obsessed with half-square triangles.

Gilbert's Grape Ultra-Mini Star Quilt, Amish Style

Becky: I love the sky. It's so limitless.
Gilbert: It is big. It's very big.
Becky: Big doesn't even sum it up, right? That word big is so small.
–What's Eating Gilbert Grape, 1993

This is my adorable LadyBug. As part of their U.S. studies, the 5^th graders at LadyBug's elementary school are assigned a project on one of the states. The project is done in partners and includes a poster with details about the state and a float that represents that state. LadyBug was assigned to a team of three. She and the other girl in their group put the float together and the third man on their team did the poster. When Grasshopper was in the 5^th grade, he also had to do a float {he had Tennessee, if you were wondering}, so we recycled the base for LadyBug's project {there's no sense in wasting good fringe, right?} and they stripped it down to the basic elements. Then LadyBug and her partner reinvented the float. I'm not sure how they got anything done, because I didn't hear a peep out of either one of the girls while they were here, but somehow, it came together really well. They painted the base green {like grass} and added the state seal and state quarter for Pennsylvania. LadyBug's partner supplied the Amish LEGO barn, and together they put together the little LEGO Hershey's factory workers and the state abbreviation {PA, seen in reverse behind the state seal because it is facing backwards} in LEGOs.

And then I butted right in and made a tiny quilt to go on the float. I had exactly eight - 1” HST's left from the label on Miss Butterfly's Zig-Zag quilt, and from that a star was born. The finished quilt is 4¾-ish”, and is hand quilted because that's how the Amish would do it. I'm not showing you the back though. A few stitches in, I realized that I could make teeny, tiny, ultra-mini stitches, or I could quilt it the right way. I picked the ultra-mini stitches.

After LadyBug's assignment was finished, she gave the quilt to her {stuffed} pet lizard, Gilbert.

Gilbert has a spot on LadyBug's bed and every night, she tucks him in before she gets tucked in herself. Until Gilbert got his new quilt, he was sleeping under an eyeglass lens cleaning cloth. Doesn't he look cozy?

Today's post brought to you by:

I Demand A Re-Count

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
–Benjamin Franklin

Grace, my ever faithful sewing sidekick, is away on holiday. It will be three weeks tomorrow since I dropped her off for a nice spa retreat. I'm hoping she'll be ready for pick-up tomorrow. In her absence, I've been doing a lot of prep work on quilts I hope to someday finish. One of those prep projects is the result of a half-square triangle swap I did almost a year ago. I got my triangles-in-the-rough back about 5 months ago, and I've been pressing. A lot. Approximately 600 freshly pressed HSTs showing here:

When I put together my triangles for the swap, I formed a plan for what to do with them based on the instructions of putting together a light and a dark fabric for each set of HSTs. I actually heard “neutral and print” and was pretty meticulous with how I put them together. I did roughly the same number of HSTs of every color and split my white and off-white neutrals evenly between the two. As is always the case with swaps, there is room for interpretation and some of what I got back didn't fit in my plans. No matter. The fabrics were still really great, so I unpicked about 300 HSTs {yes, I know }, which left me with 600 orphan triangles who needed neutral buddies to become HSTs again. Enter the Go! Fabric cutter, and in a few hours, I was all set to go {yeah, I know. Bad pun, but I couldn't resist. I ♥ puns}.

I also put together a few fabrics to fill in on some of the colors I didn't get much back on and will sew those up using the triangle papers we used originally to put our HSTs together. But I'm not showing those because that passes up “particular,” “picky” and “persnickety” and crosses over into “obsessive,” “complusive” and “just plain nutty.”

As I've pressed and cut and sorted, I've been turning over ideas for how to use up 1400± 2½” HSTs. While I was getting my swap triangles done last year I saw a quilt called Triangle Confusion and decided that I wanted to do that. Now that I have the raw materials to work with I've tried a couple of Triangle Confusion layouts. I liked the explosion of triangles with all its patterns and sub-patterns. Then, just for fun, I arranged the HSTs into a more obvious pattern and put it up for an unofficial vote.

I was kind of surprised at the results. Everyone who expressed an opinion chose Diamond Illusion. Although I didn't really know which layout I favored until people started offering opinions {which is why I ask for opinions; it helps me to know what I really want}, I realized that I was leaning more towards Triangle Confusion. It was so bright and cheerful, if not somewhat frenetic. Diamond Illusion was very drab to me even though you could see a definite pattern. Perhaps here was too much brown and orange and green and not enough yellow and pink and turquoise. So I laid it out another way. What do you think?

Green was the color I'd gotten the most back from the swap, so in my first layout I used that for all the small diamonds. It just wasn't working for me. In this new version, I used a different color for each diamond and I think I like it a lot better with more color.

Triangle Confusion is still on my mind, though. I mean, there has to be some way to make it work. So I tried organizing the colors a bit more. I am totally in love with those partial diamonds. The shape is incomplete but the eye finishes it. There's still a lot going on there, though, even with an attempt to make it play nicely by using color to force the sub-patterns. Do you see the large pinwheel in the center?

Still, there is something I really like about Triangle Confusion.

As you can see, I'm still undecided on what to do with all these half-square triangles. Unless I make a king size quilt {which would require another 1700 HSTs and I've almost entirely ruled that out}, I have enough HSTs to make two nice lap-sized quilts; one Diamond Illusion and one Triangle Confusion. The only problem is that I don't have enough of some of the colors to use an even amount in both quilts. Only one of the quilts could be rainbow bright. The other one would have to be mostly green and brown and blue. I could break up the left over browns, blues and greens a bit with solid {meaning unpieced} blocks between pinwheel blocks made of the HSTs and come out with two baby quilts to donate, plus one lap-sized rainbow-y HST quilt for me {design yet to be determined}.

Or, if I decide that I absolutely have to make both a Diamond Illusion and a Triangle Confusion quilt and they both have to have a balanced amount of color, I could make more HSTs, in which case, Jeanette, a swap would definitely be in order .

And there would probably be enough left-over HSTs for a donation quilt.

Diamond Illusion or Triangle Confusion?

He puzzled and puzzed till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. -Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Once upon a time, I made 936 - 2½” half-square triangles for a swap. Our group used a semi-paper pieceing speed method to put together groups of twelve HSTs at a time. For each set of twelve, I used a different main print fabric and I only repeated my neutral white or off-white fabrics in two sets of twelve at most. In the end, I had 78 different sets of 12 HSTs. I kept four HSTs from each set and sent the rest off to the swap hostess. Six months later, I got a box back full of half-square triangle treasure. They sat in that same box for about 3 months, and then in a drawer in my little sewing area, just waiting to be discovered. Last Wednesday, I dropped Grace off for a three-week spa vacation, and when I got home I started pulling the papers off and pressing them open on my spiffy new ironing board cover.

As I've worked, I've been puzzling about exactly what to do with these 936 HSTs when they're all pressed. Actually, I'll have more like 1250 HST's when I'm done. I think there was some room for interpretation in the instructions, which were to pair a light and a dark for each set of HSTs. I heard “print and neutral,” and kind of formed a plan around that. Some of the HSTs I got back don't work for what I had in mind as they are, so I'm unpicking a few more than 300 of them {yes, I know } and am going cut a bunch of neutral {white or off-white} HSTs with my Go! fabric cutter {the die that came with it has the perfect triangles} and put them with the prints that I've unpicked from each other. I only have about a hundred more to unpick.

When we were in the planning stages of the swap, Candace at The Double Nickel Quilt Challenge linked a really cool quilt called Triangle Confusion to my monthly finishes linky party, and I decided that's what I wanted to do with my half-square triangles. But as I have been pressing, I've been turning over options for what to really do with these HSTs now that I'm in the process of pressing and sorting. So I laid them out in a diamond pattern to see what it would look like. I really liked it, except it lacks a bit of variety. I chose green for the small diamonds because far and away, green is the color I got back the most of. I'll probably mix it up a little if I go with this layout, but isn't this a cool design?

It is fun to look at each block close up.

As I opened each HST, I tried to guess who made it. Some were easy to guess. Others, not so much.

I love how from far away it gives the illusion that it is a series of interlocking diamonds, but close up you can see each triangle and each print.

I ♥ orange. It is a highly underrated color.

I'd really almost made up my mind to go with the Diamond Illusion layout. But just for fun, I laid out a little Triangle Confusion. You can still see the diamond pattern, which I love, but it is an explosion of color.

But you can also see, among other patterns, pinwheels intermingled with the diamonds. Pinwheels are awesome.

Time for some more close-ups. I haven't posted much lately, so it is picture overload today.

It is an interesting block design.

I'm not sure why, but I only took close-ups of three of the four blocks, so this is the last one.

In the first layout, I kept the diamonds each a single color, but I mixed the other colors in everywhere else. I wanted to know how it would effect the overall design if I paired colors in the non-diamond areas {corners} of each individual block.

It is still an interesting pattern, but not quite so much of an explosion, which I think I maybe like. I didn't notice until I was editing photos, that with the colors paired as they are it makes a secondary diamond pattern; or rather, a large pinwheel on point between the diamonds.

That has me wondering what it would look like if I paired it so that the large pinwheels were all one color. I think I might like that best of all {control freak here}, but I'll have to lay it out to see because that might suck all the joy out of Triangle Confusion. I'll probably wait until I get all those other HST's unpicked and the neutral triangles cut, though. I only have about a hundred left.

Even though my puzzler is a little sore, I'm also puzzling over what size to make this quilt. My original plan was a 6 x 8 block layout with a 1" stop border and a sawtooth border beyond that, which finishes at 54” x 70”. That's a really cozy lap-size quilt. But that will leave me with 375± extra HSTs, which I will have to use up in something else. I've pondered other sizes, right on up to a 9 x 11 layout {with no borders} which finishes at a nice 72” x 88” twin size quilt. That will require an additional 300 HSTs beyond what I'm already working with. I kind of like the idea. This quilt is scrappy and patchy and full of calicos, which makes me think of quilting at its roots — quilting out of necessity and using whatever was on hand. Of course, I'm not trying to kid anyone here. I have bins and bins of fabrics and I don't need to quilt, except for the sake of my sanity. I really want this to be a useful quilt, though, because I'm excited about it. A lap size would be used for snuggling under to watch TV or read. I don't know whose twin-size bed this quilt would go on. Maybe I should open an Etsy shop . Do you think anyone would pay $2300 for a twin-size quilt?

My next thought was to make it square. I really like square quilts. 8 x 8 finishes at 64” square. I even have enough HSTs for a 9 x 9. But then, we're almost back into the bed size quilts, at 72”. So why not go super-size and make it a king? I happen to sleep in a king size bed that needs a pretty quilt on it. But for that, I'd need another 1900 HSTs .

Anyone want to swap?

Miss Butterfly's Flower Garden: A Zig-Zag Quilt Finish

My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already. –Dave Barry

The average time for a quilt from start to finish for me is 2½ years. I hardly ever work on a quilt from start to finish in one go. I almost always work on it a little bit here and there with a few other projects in between and then come back to it and then work on something else, until I finally decide that it is time to finish something, at which time I pick the project that is the closest to being done. This cute little zig-zag quilt is an exception {for the most part} to that rule. For the last seven weeks, it has been {almost} my sole project. I finished it last weekend and it is already in place on Miss Butterfly's bed.

Almost as soon as I got home from the February 16^th wedding reception my last project went as a gift to, I stared work on this zig-zag quilt for my niece. My sister and I planned it a year ago for her daughter, Miss Butterfly, and I've had the fabrics cut out since early last summer. And then it sat because I had other, more urgent things to work on. Miss Butterfly's birthday was just past mid-way through March, and I wanted to finish it in time for that. I missed the mark by a couple of weeks, getting it to her last Saturday. Even though I worked on in nearly every day since mid-February, and revised my “finish by” date, I still cut it down to the wire. We had a family get-together at my parent's on Saturday and I wanted to finish it by then so that I could deliver it in person, rather than mailing it to her {it is pretty heavy and the recent hike in postage rates has sucked all the joy out of sending and receiving packages}. The party started at 4:00 pm, but 4:00 was when I was putting the last stitches in the quilt. It's about an hour and twenty minute's drive to my mom's, plus all that hurry-up-and-wait while everyone gets their stuff ready to get out the door, so we didn't get there until 6:00. But it all worked out. Miss Butterfly's quilt was finished when we left and I made the matching pillow case {tutorial here} when we got there.

I designed this quilt to go together quickly. The HST's are 6" finished, making it relatively fast to pull a twin-size quilt together. I'd originally planned to quilt arcs from corner to corner of each triangle, in essence putting a “net” of flowers on the quilt. I even named the quilt Miss Butterfly's Flower Garden because of the effect the quilting would have. But once I got into it, I decided against that, worrying that my arcs wouldn't be even or pretty without marking them first. As the quilt came together I realized that the chevron or zig-zag design and the white Kona cotton are both very modern, but the calicos in the colored rows are more traditional and I wanted the quilting to be a good mix of both. Plus, I like to quilt to enhance the design of a quilt, rather than covering it. I settled on echo quilting just a hair wider than ¼" apart in the white, and then I did some loopy half-flowers in the colored zig-zags. I think it is a good fusion of modern and traditional. And the quilt name still works, which is a good thing because I embroidered the label six months before I even started piecing the quilt. The yellow row is my favorite because the quilting really shows up. I'm not sure why the quilting doesn't show up in the other rows as well as it does in the yellow, but it really pops in the yellow.

This is the biggest quilt I've quilted myself. The finished size is 72" x 96". I estimate it took me between 70 and 80 hours to put together. On the low end, 30 hours for cutting and piecing, 40 hours for quilting about about 5 hours for binding, I think I wound at least 20 bobbins. And yes, those are 1" pieced HST's {} around the label on the back {close-up here}. It is a great feeling to have this one finished and delivered to my niece!

Read more about this quilt:
A Start on Piecing
Finished Quilt Top & Label
Quilting in Progress
Quilting in Progress, part 2

Today's post brought to you by:

Zig-Zaggity Woop Woop

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. It transcends all barriers. –Ed Sullivan

Over the last three weeks, I've been working on a quilt for my cute niece, Miss Butterfly. It's a zig-zag quilt. I've been kind of persnickety about my process, and I think it paid off. None of my points have gone missing and the seams—the whole quilt really—lays so flat. I kind of ♥ how it turned out.

I finished the top this week. It's twin size {72" x 96"}, and will be the biggest quilt I've ever quilted on my little machine. I'm looking at the throat space {or harp, or whatever it is called} and wishing for a Sweet Sixteen.

I've been thinking a lot about how I will handle a quilt this size. In my early quilting days, I was a roller. The instructor at the beginning machine quilting class I took said that's how to do it, so that's what I did. But then I read something Leah Day said in reference to rolling a quilt into a log for quilting. She said the reason that logs are floated down a river is because they are so hard to handle, and rolled quilts are equally hard to handle. I didn't believe her. A huge puddle of quilt in the machine seemed like it would be more difficult to maneuver and just in the way. At the time, I was working on my Polka Dot Quilt , and noticed while I was working on the quilting in the larger circles, that the whole process was kind of cumbersome. I decided to give puddling a try—not a complete puddle, mind you, but I unrolled my quilt a little, giving me a little more slack to work with while still maintaining the tidiness a roll creates. It helped, and since then, I've become a hybrid puddle/roller, leaning more towards the puddling, because really, Leah's right about logs being hard to handle.

I'm a little worried too, because the half-square triangles are 6", and that means they are going to require gross free-motion quilting skills, and I'm better at fine free-motion quilting {like how I am in life; better fine motor skills than gross motor skills}. I'd originally planned to quilt arcs in each of the triangles, from corner to corner, making a "net" of flowers in the quilt. But the long side of the triangles is 7½", and to get pretty arcs, I'll have to mark the quilt {see above reference to gross free-motion quilting skills}. So, I've revised my quilting plan and hope to incorporate a bit of modern quilting {straight lines} with something a bit more traditional. I think this will fuse nicely with the more traditional calico fabrics and modern chevron/zig-zag quilt design.

This quilt has been in the works for a while. Or at least the idea of this quilt has been in the works for a while. I cut all the fabrics for the half-square triangles early last summer and I worked on the label a few months later, before any sewing actually began. I named the quilt before I even started working on it, thinking of the quilting I planned to do in it. Now that the top is a reality and I'm going to start quilting {and not stop until it is finished}, the name still works, but I did have to do a little tweaking to make the label a little more accurate. It used to say "September 2012."

I usually baste my quilts on my living room carpet {which also doubles as a design wall}. I know that some of you are being carried off in stretchers at the moment, due to shortness of breath, dizziness, pain in your left arm and tightness in your chest, but it works for me. But there isn't enough floor space for a 6' x 8' quilt, so I mopped the kitchen floor yesterday. I'm still putting the back together and seriously considered banning any food or drink in the kitchen until I can get the quilt basted, but decided against it because food and drink are already banned in all other areas of the house and I didn't want the Not-So-Little Bugs to starve. I'm hoping I can get it all together and basted before too much more time passes, otherwise, I'll have to mop the floor again, and frankly, I'd rather be quilting.

Speaking of which, here's a bit of funky swing {which gives this post its title} to quilt by.

Persnickety

Persnickety: /pərˈsnikətē/
Adjective
1. Placing too much emphasis on trivial or minor details; fussy.
2. Requiring a particularly precise or careful approach.

The other week, I left a comment for P. on a quilt top she'd finished, using thrifted men's shirts. I admired how all her corners matched, how nice and flat it laid and how all the prints went in the same direction. She did a really beautiful job on it. She replied back and said that she'd been rather persnickety about how it went together, and I thought that I really liked that adjective.

I don't know about you, but there are certain things I'm very particular about when I quilt. Well, I'm particular about everything, really. I like things a certain way, but I won't go into all of that. For sewing or quilting, I wash all fabrics before using. I piece with Gütterman 50-weight cotton thread and I quilt with AURIfil Makò 50-weight thread. When I lay out a quilt, I put a pin in the top left corner block so I know which way is top and which way is bottom, and I'm very careful to sew the pieces together in the right order. I make sure all the stripes go in the same direction {usually vertically} and that any directional fabrics go the same direction.

Lately, I've taken to making sure that the lengthwise grain and the crosswise grain of each block all go in the same direction throughout the quilt. The cross grain has slightly more give than the length of grain and it seems like everything lines up so much nicer if the grains are all going the same way.

Case in point: I'm working on a fun zig-zag quilt for my niece, Miss Butterfly.

I cut the fabric for it sometime late last spring or early last summer, about the time I decided that the grain should all go the same way. I just started assembling it last week. As I've made the half-square triangles, I put the squares together with the cross grain going one direction on one square and the lengthwise grain going the other direction, so that once they were sewn on the diagonal and opened up, the entire block has the same grain. What I didn't plan for when I penciled in the diagonal line on the white fabric, was that the triangles would have to go in alternating directions in the quilt. Even though all the blocks have the grain going in the same direction in both halves of the half-square triangles, all of the half-square triangles on the left side of the chevrons have the lengthwise grain going up and down and the half-square triangles on the right side have the crosswise grain going up and down. It bothers the persnickety quilter in me just a little. I considered re-marking half the blocks, but decided that I didn't want a pencil line dissecting half of my white triangles. I'll pay closer attention next time.

All of this makes me curious, and I wonder what you all are persnickety about, quilting or otherwise.

Zig-Zag Flag and Other Patriotic Quilt Blocks

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
–Francis Scott Key, The Star Spangled Banner

Last Wednesday {July 4^th} was kind of a big deal around these parts. There are parades and flags and fireworks and red, white and blue everywhere. I had the day off work {it's a national holiday, after all} so I decided that I wouldn't be any farther behind on my quilting to-do list if I took a break from what I am currently working on to do a little something fast and fun, but still on the to-do list. You see, I was distracted inspired by a super cute door hanger by Karen at The Recipe Bunny, who'd linked up to my July Finishes page. I thought her zig-zag flag block would fit perfectly in my Patriotic Sampler quilt. I had picked a couple of blocks that I just wasn't feeling the love on, which is probably why it has sat in its box all sad and lonely for . . . a really long time. I pulled it out, thinking I could throw together a scrappy 12" block with 108 HST's in an afternoon.

I tend to over estimate my powers of fabric persuasion. It took me the afternoon just to cut the fabrics. I got the HST's and the blue section {which may or may not have appliqué stars added to it later} put together before fireworks. I had a busy work week last week, so I fit in a bit of sewing time when ever I could and finished the rest of the block over the next few days {instead of hours}.

When I open my box of red, white and blue fabrics, I always wonder why this quilt isn't finished. I've been working on it since before LadyBug was born. I love the fabrics and colors and theme so much. So while I had it out, I put together a couple more blocks. I did a banner flag, which finishes at 5" x 12" {odd size, I know}, and I love it! Getting a good photo of it is another story.

I also put together a Patriot's Star and I think this is my absolute favorite block of the whole quilt. I reduced the pattern to 5" and omitted the black stained-glass effect outline. I just love how it turned out.

I've got 13 of the 15 blocks finished now. I'm pretty sure what the last two 12" blocks will be, and then after that I've got to paper piece 27 - 1" five-point stars for the sashing. I'm not really looking forward to that.

This quilt is on my list of quilts to finish this year, so hopefully I'll get back to it soon. In the meantime, I'm off to work on another distraction important project.