What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

When quilting buddy Sheryl contacted me to see if I would do a Quilt of Valor for her, I immediately said yes.  She brought over a wonderful Double Friendship Star quilt, beautifully pieced with white sashing and a navy blue border.

Ah, look at that, perfectly measured and sewn borders.

I quilted it with red Glide thread with Bottom Line in the bobbin.

The pantograph is Fascination, one I use a lot.

When I ran out of bobbin thread in the middle of a row, I thought I would show you how I take care of that.  I tie off ...

Patriotic and Paper Pieced Paper piecing isn’t all that bad! It seems to be everywhere, and although I’ve foundation paper pieced in the past, I didn’t love it. That disposition has...

See more sewing and quilting adventures from Jen Eskridge of ReannaLily Designs

After many requests for a pattern for my Old Glory quilt, I decided to put together a little tutorial for it.  Because structured improvisation is included in my book in great detail, I am only including basic instructions for the components and layout for the quilt using solid color representation for the blocks.  If you want to make this quilt using your scraps with improv as shown, check out my book, Stash Statement, for three different easy methods!

One of our long time members is downsizing and she gave more than 20 gorgeous patriotic blocks to the guild to use in a future Quilt of Valor.  There are some really amazing blocks in this collection.  I was told that they were from a block exchange.  All I can say is "Wow - and thank you Mary!"

 And I've made 4 blocks (so far) to add to that mix.  While I'm digging in those red, white, and blue scraps and stash I may make a few more.



We are having a Quilt of Valor work session the morning ...

Quilts of Valor have been on my mind lately, with lots of time checking them out on Pinterest and on blogs that I read. 



At our guild meeting this weekend, one of our members donated several beautiful patriotic blocks to use for future Quilts of Valor.  The blocks were not all the exact same size or shape and were from a block exchange she had been involved in.  We are having a QOV sewing session the morning of our May guild meeting. So we'll figure out a layout to use those blocks that day. I'm thinking a nice ...

I have the flimsy done for this Quilt of Valor, way more quickly than I expected.  This is an adaptation of the Spotlight pattern by Mountainpeek Creations, which I've used before on a different panel.  I love the borders made up of a combination of pieced blocks and plain strips.  The original pattern used 9-patch blocks. But I felt that the stars would be more appropriate for this one.  I ended up only using 12 of the stars, so there are stars left to use somewhere else.

My husband left at noon on a business trip, and I went ...

I was looking at my UFO list yesterday, and decided that I just wasn't "feeling it" for the next item on my list for this month. It's an autumn themed churn dash quilt and it's just the wrong time of year to feel excited about autumn fabrics. So I decided to simply pull another UFO out instead.

This week I had bought some red and blue yardage to finish this patriotic panel. So it was the ideal next project.

I've added a red inner border around the panel so far, and have 7 red/cream/blue ...

On Monday the Cotton Quilters held their February meeting. We began promptly at 1 p.m. (I hate when meetings begin late.)

Counting out their yoyos? Or giving up half?

Oh no, we're not talking during a meeting. We'd never do ...

We had our second sew day to work on the patriotic quilt, five more friends sewing on my machines, pressing seams, cutting sashing and cornerstones, and making binding.  Of course, we had a pot luck lunch too, and did take a nice break to enjoy a meal.  I decided to do the Nine Patch Star on the first sew day, but didn’t show it to you then. I had worked on the Classic and Vintage Fat Quarter Shop design for a patriotic quilt, and they have now pushed their reveal back to January.   So, I went with the Nine ...

The stars and bars design on this next Quilt of Valor was interesting and a wonderful way to use up scraps, but I had a moment of pause when I realized the bar of stars on the left side vertical panel was embroidered.  I have not worked with this type of fabric on the longarm before.

Have you seen this embroidered star fabric in the stores? I have recently, and would not have thought of using it on a quilt as it is heavier than the standard quilting cotton, and the stars are heavily embroidered with a substantial thread build ...

Moving to the next Quilt of Valor, this one was a four patch design, alternating with printed large squares, and a red border. It had a masculine look to it, so I decided to use a pantograph called Tiger Swirl on it. The points have a flame-like feel, meant to be like a tiger’s stripes, with curved lines.

Folding it up to check the borders, there was a little bit extra but not too bad. You can see how the outer edge of the red angles just a bit downward at the edge compared to the joining seam on ...