American Hero quilt top

This is my first American Hero quilt top finish for this year, ready to be mailed to Sue Nebeker .
Most of the blocks came from ROBIN .

Weekend doings

My weekend wasn't quite as productive as I had hoped (we have a carnival going on on the base, to which the kids wanted to go to, and I was helping out for 4 hours at the school carnival yesterday), but I managed to make four little wallets. The patriotic one is the one I'm keeping, then Michelle wanted a pink one and the red and blue/pink ones are for friends.

Other than that I was playing around with some layout ideas for another American Hero quilt top.

At this point everything is just put up on the design wall and nothing is "set in stone", so which of the two do you all prefer?

OK, time to let DH on the computer.

American Hero top

Browsing through some old posts of mine I realized I never shared a picture of the finished top I made with blocks that I received from Robin M. (+ two of my blocks) to use for this American Hero top. I have some more blocks left for another quilt top, but I need to bring most of the blocks up to size first, before I can piece the top together, but that will have to wait for another post.

Two wall hangings finished

Back in April I shared pictures of these two projects in progress and can say they are both finally finished. :o)

With the amount of UFO's I have (I stopped listing them after 45 projects) I'll try to get at least one of my tops (regardless of size) finished per month. Some of my UFO's will take me a year or longer to be finished, like the Moonglow and Robert Callahan quilt (haven't started on this one yet other than letting the fabric age for several years already hehe), but I know they'll get finished eventually and I'll keep you all updated here on my progress.
First I want to finish two more American Hero tops to send out to Sue to be finished. One is just about done, but the second one still needs a lot more planing with all of the block sized being different, but I should be able to finish both tops by the end of this month and then I'll have a total of 6 tops to send out.

Four American Hero tops

Michelle had helped me sewing up enough rail fence strips that we were able to make one Rail Fence top and one Heart top using what was left over from the strips. The hearts were fused and then button hole stitched.












Then from the pre-cut fabric for shaded 4-patch blocks that Robin sent I was able to create two tops as well, adding my fabric for the alternating squares, setting triangles, and borders.



So these four tops are ready to be mailed to Sue for American Hero quilts and I have some more blocks in preparation for two more tops. Those will take me a while longer though, with the blocks all being of a different size and my kids going on summer break soon.


This is the beginning of one top I'm working on with blocks of varying sizes. Once the center is pieced, I'll add a narrow red border followed by a 6" wider border.

As always, to get a larger view of a picture, just click on it. :o)

Two American hero tops in the making etc.

Robin had sent me a nice stack of partially prepared shaded 4-patch blocks (among an assortment of other finished blocks that I'll show below) to use for American Hero tops. I went right ahead and finished the blocks and squared them up to 7" and put 4 of these units together in one larger block.




Here I was playing around with a layout option of the blocks.








With the amount of blocks that I have I'll be making this center for a top. In this picture I simply laid out the pieces to take a picture last evening, I'll try to get everything sewn together over the weekend. Today I will have to purchase some more fabric for the setting triangles for two quilts and the border.







This is the second version I'll sew up.
Michelle likes the first center better, I like this one. :o)










The border fabric I intend to use on these is the same I used for several other quilts. It seems to really pull out the colors of all blocks.
The rail fence top is another American Hero top. It's ready to be mailed, but I'll mail it together with the other two tops as soon as they are finished.
In this picture are some more of the blocks that Robin had sent and I was playing around with them to see how I could incorporate all of the different sizes into one top. I don't know yet if I want to float the blocks on a white or blue background, but might have a clearer thought about that once the other two tops are completed.



Here is my completed "1st quilt", well complete, other than the label. I couldn't find Bubble jet set anywhere around here, so I ordered some yesterday online. Once I have that, I'll print a label out for this and quite a few other quilts, like the deployment quilt, on which the quilting is also finished. The binding is attached by machine on it, so now I just need to sew the binding to the back by hand. Another quilt I'm sewing the binding on by hand right now is the Lone Star wall hanging, so things are moving along nicely and I should be able to finish quite a few more UFO's by the end of the year. :o)

Working on various things

Before I sent the table topper off last week I took a picture of the back with the label on it. Small projects like this one are really fun to quilt on the Juki and I have some larger projects lined up already that I'm planing on quilting soon. My main problem is that I'm making the quilting process more complicated than it has to be, because I want to find the "perfect" pattern for each block. Well, with several sampler block quilt tops that is taking me quite some time and I've come to the conclusion that I just need to learn to relax and just go for it. lol The one's that are causing me problems are my quilts anyway, so who really cares how I quilt them, other than me? ;o)

I didn't want the quilt police to get me for not having equal quilting on the entire surface, so I added some echo quilting around the heart center I worked on the other day. Since I wanted the heart motif to remain more dominant I echo quilted it using plain white thread.
Right now I'm in the mood to just get things FINISHED, so I think I'll just sew a "flip" backing on without a zipper and no binding around the pillow. OK, I know there must be some formal and correct term for my pillow method, but I can't think of it right now, so if you're wondering what I'm talking about, I'll try to briefly describe it. I'll lay two overlapping pieces of fabric with right side down on the right side of the "top" (the two back pieces will have finished edges), then sew around the entire thing and just turn the whole thing right side out and voila, finished pillow case! :o)
I'll try to get that done today and if so, I'll post a picture later.

Here's yet another American Hero top that Michelle is helping me work on - a simple Rail Fence top. While I do all the cutting and ironing, Michelle sews the strips for the rail fence together.Then I piece the center and put the borders on. I just got done putting the top together and will try to go out to buy some batting and backing for it next week to finish the quilt.
Michelle started working on more Rail Fence strips, but I thought we should try another layout. So I was tracing, fusing and button hole stitching some heart blocks and the result so far is below. Michelle still has a few more strips to sew to make the top larger, but so far I really like it. The border is going to be similar again to the top above if I have enough fabric.

The top is finished

of another American Hero quilt. Michelle's ready to help put more blocks together with me, so I need to start cutting up and preparing some fabric for her. She knows who these quilts are for and she's proud to help.

The Flying geese units are easy for her to piece and I don't have to worry about her using an accurate 1/4" all the time, because we're using the Quilt in a Day Flying geese ruler. Since we'll be making quite a few more of the FG units, I'll have to come up with some block variations, so not all tops will look the same. That will also make it more interesting for me to work on them, because I get bored with the same designs easily. lol

Working on American Hero blocks

Michelle was helping me today to work on some more blocks for an American Hero quilt. While I was ironing, cutting and marking the fabric, she did simple straight line sewing on my Pfaff.

As you can see from the picture she was having a lot of fun zipping away and did a really good job. Together we made enough blocks for 2 1/2 quilts - that's when I ran out of the fabric we used. I hope to find some more of it next week when I have to get more fabric for sashing and borders as well.

American Hero quilt top

Another American Hero quilt top is finished. Originally I planned the border a bit different, but I ended up having problems executing it, so I simplified it. The top will either go in the mail on Tuesday or I'll take it with me on the plane, when I fly to WA for the Sewing & Quilting Expo in Puyallup the end of this month, to be given to a "longarmer" to be quilted. The star blocks in this quilt are 16" and I pieced them using the large Quilt in a Day Flying Geese ruler.