In the Mood for Red, White and Blue

‘‘Tis the month for sewing red, white and blue quilts which means I have three Finally Finished, two of them longtime UFOs and one quilt a start and finish within nine days which would have been done sooner if not for a five day visit to the Grandparent House. I already have a nice collection red, white and blue (RBW) quilts and it’s been awhile since I’ve made one, with the exception of some small wallhangings, but these three just “happened” to get made. 

This is the first RBW quilt finally finished and if it weren’t for Mary Etherington, Country Threads posting the one she was currently working on, there was a strong possibility this would have remained a top. It’s been over five years since this was made and was a QAL which Mary hosted. I changed the dimensions of the blocks to 6” finished so I could die cut them and used fabrics from my Minnick & Simpson stash. Seeing Mary’s current quilt gave me the impetus to finally quilt it. It’s the first time I’ve ever sprayed basted and really liked it and thought it would be a game changer but as I later discovered it works best right now for small quilts. This quilt measures 28” square and already hanging on the hallway door.

This is the second RBW quilt which I finally finished as a result of the first quilt because I made the two at the same time and it just wouldn’t be right for it to remain an UFO. The pattern is Dandy designed by Pat Sloan and she also hosted a QAL. I thought this was a great pattern for the Zippity Doo Dah fabrics designed by Sandy Gervais which I had a layer cake and yardage. This has to be one if the few quilts I've made which only used four fabrics. After I made this top, I wasn’t sure how to quilt it so that’s why it was an UFO for so long.  I decided to quilt it with curvy horizontal lines and again I spray basted it and this time I don’t think I liked it as much with the numerous pinches and puckers. This quilt measures 34” x 46” and will be a seasonal table topper for the dining room table.  (I’ve been thinking a lot of Pat lately because right after I finished my Dandy quilt, I learned that while going for a walk, she tripped over uneven pavement and broke both of her wrists and had surgery today. I’m a big fan of Pat’s patterns and fabrics and wish her a speedy recovery and hope she heals well.)

While hunting for the binding for the Dandy quilt and coming upon the Zippity Doo Dah layer cake, I knew I wanted to use it for an Algorithm Quilt, a pattern designed by Gundrun Erla, GE design, which is a fun pattern to make and a nice change of pace from the strip and square quilts I’m fond of making. Would you believe, we're at the end of June and this is the first quilt the Master Quilt Holder has held up outside? 

The pattern did not include borders and measures approximately 49"x64". Normally I do not add borders but thought since I still had yardage of the floral print I would add borders so the quilt measures 57"x70 which is a nice size to cover more than a lap.

Since I added borders, I was tempted to quilt straight through the borders but decided that I would start the straight and curvy line quilting inside the top and bottom and spent the time burying the knots.  I was going to use a natural color thread and glad I decided at the last minute to use instead Red. For the borders, I also did a combination of straight and curvy lines also.

For both the Algorithm and Dandy quilt, I was able to back it with a 2001 print designed by Jill Kemp/Bear Paw Design.  It's a patriotic print with text saying "Remember Me' which I'm glad I did because it's definitely been waiting to be used.  Since I didn't like the red print I had left from the Zippity Do Dah stash, I decided to use a ticking stripe of red and natural which went well with the other prints.

If you read my last post about my Centred Quilt, which I mentioned that I was unhappy with the new Blogger interface and some may have interpreted that I wasn't going to post anymore since I wrote that this post would be the last post I would do in the old or Legacy Blogger interface which I dearly love. Well surprise, surprise, I'm writing this post in the new Blogger interface since I decided to put on my big Blogger pants and post with the flow.  My mentor Sue of PatchworknPlay and tormmmentor Sandra of mmm quilts have been helpful.  I discovered one of the problems I was having is that my MAC Pro Laptop is ten years old and cannot support the new Blogger interface so the toolbar was not appearing.  It worked on my iPad but there was no way I was going to type with one finger.  My hubby suggested that I try typing it on my PC and it works but I had problems with uploading photos directly from OneDrive.  Another problem is inserting links so I apologize for not including them in this post.  Hopefully, Sandra, who promised a little tutorial for the new Blogger interface can offer some insight.

Wishing everyone a Safe, Happy and Healthy Fourth!