I spent most of Sunday working on the wedding quilt for my niece Kelly, or should I really say my future nephew to be. When they last visited me, Nick looked through my quilt books and asked if I could make a quilt with flags because he is very patriotic. Well, time has passed, the wedding is in five months. That means that I have to have it finished by the end of May if I want to have it back from the long-arm quilter by the end of August. I’ll probably be hand stitching the binding while I’m on the plane going back East.
So how did I find a flag pattern? He liked the quilts by Judy Martin. Of course he did–all those little pieces and diagonal seams. So lots of time was spent going through all my books and magazines. Judy’s quilts were the best looking but I kept on searching. While I love stars, I don’t like flags. That may have been one of the reasons I’ve gotten such a late start. I finally decided on a star quilt by Patrick Lose, even got the fabric from his shop in Phoenix. I was all set—until I saw that the stars were done with templates and not paper pieced. Another dead end. Not all was lost. I had added, one again, to my fabric stash. There’s always a siver lining!
I was about to give up when I got my latest issue of Quiltmaker. There, on page 57, was THE QUILT! Titled “Star Gazing”, it had lots of big stars (flight or forty), half log cabins that could be made in red and blue for the flags. It was great! Could it be any better? I guess it could be smaller- 90″x108″.
But wait, there’s more! I am able to use my stash for the entire front of the quilt! Life is grand. Life is wonderful! What could go wrong?
Well, Easter Sunday evening, after I had dropped Mom off at her retirement home, I decided I had time to work on the half finished 24 red and blue log cabin blocks. Chainstitching the strips, I was on block 20 when I noticed something didn’t look right. I had sewn 20 strips on the wrong side of the block! I decided it was time to turn off the machine and go to bed.
Krista B Designs 