Quilt of Valor 2013

Here is another Quilt of Valor I made this year.  Some of my quilting buddies and I found a Mystery Quilt pattern in a quilting magazine, and we all decided we'd make the quilt in reds, whites, and blues to be valor quilts.  I don't make pieced quilts from patterns very often, and this was interesting for me to do.  Especially interesting because I had no idea what the final quilt would look like!

And when I did finish it, I was really surprised at the secondary designs which appeared.  In the photo above, try to look at it as a series of independent rows.  For example, the striped blocks were simply large blocks with corners added to them.  But when the other rows are added to it, a more star-like pattern emerges.  

Then the quilting started.  I chose to do different free motion designs in different areas of the quilt.  In the blue borders I did really big spirals, all down the row.

And each of the small squares received a leaf design,with a curving "vine" connecting all of them.

In the large striped blocks I did a large starburst(?).  Not quite sure what to call it.  It was actually quite easy and fun to do.  I marked the center of the square.  Then I started at the outside edge and made a curvy line into that center spot.  After that I simply swirled back out to the edge, more or less following the same curve as the first line, travelled a little bit in the seam, and made another curvy line back to the center.

I really like how it looks.  This was a design I found in one of Leah Day's books.

And when I got to the very end of the quilting, I had exactly this much thread left on the bobbin!  Good timing, don't you think?

I found a nice piece of patriotic fabric on sale (whoopee!!) and pieced it with some red pieces for the back.

As part of the piecing process, I was left with a lot of half-square triangles, which had been trimmed off one of the blocks.  We quilters do like to save things, don't we!  And after all, these were perfectly good HST's, all cut and sewn and ready to be used.

So I sewed twelve of them together into a strip like this.

And I used them to embellish the pillow case which goes along with each quilt as a presentation bag.  

Now, I still have quite a few of those pieces left, and no, I haven't thrown them away yet!