Red, White & Blue...and You

 No, I don't want you to enlist.  I want to make one last plea for my readers to consider making a few (or many) of these cute red, white and blue Quilt of Valor blocks.  Time is running out...These are part of a block drive that the Machine Quilter's Exposition show is coordinating.  All blocks are being donated to the QOV organization to make quilts for wounded soldiers and/or their families.  If ever there is a worthy organization to donate a few hours of your time, this is it.  You can use your scraps, or purchase a small amount of yardage specific for the cause.  For your info, it only takes 1-1/3 yard to make about 9 blocks.  We all can spare that much.  Here's a few that I made this past week...

I posted directions for them within the last 2-3 weeks.  They finish 12-1/2" (raw).  The three stars are a basic 9-patch construction, while the other one is a 16-patch type construction.  I make them up at a rate of about 6-8 per hour, once they are cut out.  Very quick.

 As you can see below, I have a production line of blocks ready to be stitched, or if you are me, you are mumbling "what a mess!".  It is about 75 more blocks.  I have now made over 200, and much of this fabric was pulled from my stash.   I would love to have some more (Yes, I have gotten a few already!) blocks from my blog readers to bring to the show to donate.  You can email me directly if you have questions, or have a look here.  If you do decide to send some directly to me, email for the addy, and I must have them by April 5th.

 Since we are on red, white and blue, I will show you a very busy RWB quilt I finished last week.  It happens to be the largest quilt I have ever done, a whopping 116x105 or so.  It took what seemed like forever too.  Each block is done separately because there is not much flow from one block to the next.  The quilt's cohesion is it's color.  There are some pseudo-repeats of block pattern, which did help me to not have to design 72 different blocks, but still...

 This is for her daughter, as a wedding quilt.  She must be some patriotic!!  I used Omni thread in dark blue and tan, and it has a Hobbs batting.  FYI, if you want to use wool, the Tuscany has just been the worst lately for quality and variability.  Please avoid it and use Hobbs Heirloom or Quilters Dream wool.

 I combined a myriad of feathers, line work, a filler that kind of looked like fireworks, and others.  And there are stars in as many places as I could cram them...some blocks, and along the border.  We'll get there soon...

 This is the center.  Because the piecing didn't align exactly, I didn't want to use ruler work because that would accentuate that.  Instead, I did free quilting in the white and wavy lines in the red.  I have used wavy lines in several blocks too.  They kind of remind me of the waving flag, and look less formal on a fun quilt like this one.

 On the outer border, which is 6-1/2" wide, I made a star from a file folder.  It's traced with chalk across the border, and then stitched with a ruler. 

The blue thread shows some, but quilts with massive amounts of print are a struggle to get anything to show.

 It is currently winging its way to southern California, so the owner can finish a very long binding (he he!).

 One more lool...I like the blocks with Terry-Twist.  One thing I found was that many blocks were trimmed down, so one row of squares appeared thinner than the others.  If I just did a C-C, this would be evident.  The Terry-Twist gives more movement to the stitching, and tricks the eye.

As this very lazy daylight savings day is coming to an end, I'll give one more push to please consider donating a few blocks.  Imagine how many would be made if each reader only made a couple?