Category: Americana Quilt

I finished cutting out all the squares for the star section of the quilt. Most of the squares still have to be cut on the diagonal in order to make triangles, but the worst is over.

I even started assembling my first star block.

Showing off my work to Dan, he mentioned (a) he really missed the flannel shirts I cut all the squares from and (b) the quilt is going to be bigger than I had anticipated. First, it’s a little bit late to tell me that he wants to keep the shirts! They are cut into little 4 inch squares now. No way I’m sewing them back together. Besides, they didn’t fit him in the first place.

Second, rats. I’d curse at the pattern, except it’s my own. I really meant this to fit my nephew’s twin bed. Dan’s right though. I know not to question his math skills. I looked over my notes. The quilt is going to fit a queen bed. If I make it thinner by removing two rows it will no longer look like a real flag, which I admit is not the end of the world. Yet, the whole beauty of the design is that it does resemble a real flag. Maybe I could convince my sister that she HAS to buy her 5-year-old son a queen sized bed. I’m sure she would just run right out the very next day.

I could always recut all the squares into smaller squares.

Or I could gift it to somebody else. Why does this happen with most of the presents I make? Very rarely does a gift go to the recipient I originally intended it for. Surely, it says something about my character.

 

In order for me to complete my nephew’s Christmas present on time, I started on it last night.

It will be an Americana quilt. More exactly, the front will look like an American flag, while the back will feature Americana fabric. I’m still looking for the “right” fabric.

This mess on my sewing table only makes up 1/4 of the quilt top. The majority of the fabric going into the quilt top was kindly donated by Dan. All of the plaid fabrics came from his old flannel shirts. The starry navy blue fabric was purchased on Etsy.

My goal is to hand quilt the star area and machine quilt the stripes. Hence, the reason that I am starting now and not in October.

The design is my own and one that will probably be tweaked again before I stitch everything together. I truly tried to support the indie quilt pattern writer, but I couldn’t find anything that would work with plaid fabrics. I ran at least 15 searches on Google trying to find a quilt pattern that was suitable. Heck, just finding quilt patterns for sale was a huge challenge. I found a million free patterns, but like I mentioned, I wanted to support the indie quilter. I ran into a wall and finally gave up. It’s a shame that the quilters don’t have a Ravelry.

So, I sat down with a pencil and some graph paper. Below is version 2 of my draft. I’m still not happy with the star section and will probably change it. I’ve already altered the star block.