Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue!

Or the red. Or the white. Or the blue. Or the red and white, blue and white, red and blue. Or the patriotic, or any quilt with a combination of these three colors, any shade, tint or hue predominating. Since yesterday, June 14th, was Flag Day — and July 4th is coming up — we thought it would be fun to have a parade of quilts using these colors. For information about submitting, see the end of this post.

Quilt Title: 2016-2020: Fractured
Quilter: Judy Racine
Dimensions: 63” x 63”
This is based on the Libs Elliott “Just Like Heaven” Pattern. I altered it in a couple ways to suit my taste: I changed out square designs to create a more underlying cohesion and eliminated one of the color values to suit me.What I learned from this quilt: don’t use Mountain Mist wool batting. The bearding is horrible. I used left over scraps for the back. 

Quilt Title: Betsy’s Creation
Quilt Maker: Elizabeth Eastmond
Quilt Info: 72″ by 86
I’d always wanted a flag quilt, and one bright day I cut up a lot of red, white, blue and put it together. But why stop there? I made up a tip sheet of how I constructed my quilt, and put it for free on my website. I think, from start to finish, I did the top in just under two days. And then I had four blocks leftover, so I took an extra day to make a small quilt to hang in our hallway at home (see below).

Link to free pattern sheet and more photos. Why is it called Betsy’s Creation? Well, because of the Betsy Ross, legend, of course, and also because my childhood nickname was Betsy.

Since we are dark in July (our meeting falls on the July 4th holiday), if you have other Show and Share quilts you’d like us to see, please also send them along to our email, along with quilt details. We had a series of quilts shown at our Zoom meeting on Saturday, and we’d like to share some of them with you. Not all are here, as we are awaiting the quilt details from their makers.

Working title: Chaos 2020
Quilt Maker: Debbi LoCicero
Dimensions: 36” x 48” vertical wall hanging 
Based on a string pieced block intersected with white pick up stix in various locations

I took a class over 20 years ago, never finished more than 2 blocks that didn’t look anything like these.  When I couldn’t figure out what the original block was, I just started piecing strips together until I had a new “piece of fabric” and then cut that into 7” blocks. I liked a pick-up stix block we recently made as a group for a charity quilt and decided to intersect my blocks with various tone on tone white fabrics. I like the orderly disorder that resulted.  I will try to machine quilt this wall hanging because it’s small enough…I’m really more of a piecer than “quilter.”

Quilt Title: Shapes of Water
Quilter: Lynn Hanna
Quilt Dimensions: 20” x 40”
Original design

It was a grey winter day in Yosemite when I took a photo of the creek.  I abstracted some of the shapes the water made as it tumbled over the flat, rounded rocks.  I reversed and flipped the shapes, repeated in both light and dark and dark and light, and assembled them like a cascading river.  To make the water, I used some hand dyed fabric I colored when I was experimenting with making  value range gradations from one dye bath. (The background is Kona Silver).  I quilted flat rock and water shapes and abstract trees along the banks.  I used a neutral thread so the complex quilting designs are subtle, hopefully drawing the viewer in for a closer look.

Quilt Title: Forced Change
Quilter: Lynn Hanna
Dimensions: About 42” x 56”
Original design

At QuiltCon in Austin this February, I signed up for a color class.  I came with my red violet fabrics in a variety of shades, tints, and tones, along with the opposite lime green zingers.  I was really looking forward to the color class.  When I walked in, I realized I had made a mistake somewhere.  I had signed up for an improvisation class, not something I would have done, had I been paying better attention.  So I went with it, and basically made purple improv fabric.  When I got home, I decided to cut it up and do something with it.  This is the result.

Our world was just moving along, a fairly regular and predictable pattern to everyone’s lives, until COVID-19 arrived.  The virus, my yellow-green zinger fabric,  started to affect plans and alter our interactions.  Then came the stay-at-home orders.  A fear of infection as well as the effort to prevent neighbors illnesses kept me home.  Our entire world took a drastic left turn, and social norms as we knew them will be changed.  There is chaos as we work to establish new patterns and move forward with the virus becoming a part of our lives.

Quilt Title: A Purposeful End
Maker: Lynn Hanna
Diameter roughly 25”
Original design by Lynn Hanna

This was a personal challenge.  I wanted to make curved wedges with curved crossway elements into an organic tree stump shape that, when pieced together, would be flat, and look like a tree stump.  I figured it out and I did it!

The title comes from contemplation about why I quilt.  At the end of the children’s book,  The Giving Tree, the stump is for sitting.  COVID-19 has spurred thoughts about “the end.”  What will become of this tree stump, a technical exercise.  Will it become a wall decoration?  A table covering?  And what of my other quilts?  What will happen to them in the end?  Why do I make them?  These were some of my  thoughts as I worked on this quilt.

Just for interest sake, I have sold this quilt, so it’s no longer an issue swirling in my brain.  Lighter, happier musings have taken over today because now I have money to fund my fabric infatuation.

If you have a quilt to share, please email it to iemodernquiltguild@gmail.com along with the usual:

Don’t let your lack of info stop you, as you can approximate the size by saying, wallhanging, or twin size, etc. But we do want to hear about your quilt!