Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

My next veteran's quilt is a mystery

I've been working for a few weeks on a design for my next veteran's quilt/QOV project. After about 20 iterations I've finally settled on the design and then I decided to make it a mystery quilt.

My quilt club makes the veteran's quilts and we have a new blog.  I decided to post the mystery clues on the Country School blog to get our members using the new blog. But anyone is welcome to participate. You can get information on the mystery project here. Our veteran's quilts are generally 48" x 60" and that's what this mystery is for but I'm also giving instructions for a QOV size quilt by adding 3 borders. The quilt is all squares and half square triangles

You can make your quilt for any purpose that you wish but if you want to make the veteran's size and send the finished quilt to us we will be happy to have it to deliver to the veteran's hospital on Christmas Eve.

Here are the fabrics that I am using. I'm doing a veteran's quilt (the fabrics on the left) and a QOV (fabrics on the right).  That fern print is going to be one of the borders on the QOV quilt. 

Of course it's a mystery quilt so I can't work on it during Sewing Friday and Saturday and I'll have to get together another project for that. Maybe I need to pull out another of my UFO boxes and get something finished for a change.

 

Sewing Friday

Today was my favorite Friday of the month, it was Sewing Friday with the Country School Quilters. We had a great turnout today and everyone seemed to be energized with fun projects. I'm working on a veteran's quilt and a Quilt of Valor.

I finished up this veteran's quilt that I started last month. It (and the QOV that's in process) is made from leftovers from some other projects that I made from the Patriot palette. I rather like this one. Tomight I will get the cutting done for the QOV so I can finish it tomorrow. I might even be able to start something else. For now, this one goes in the to-be-quilted pile.

Planning my next QOV and veteran's quilt projects

In 2 weeks it will be time for another sewing mini-retreat with the Country School Quilters. We now have our meeting space the second Friday and Saturday of every month. I'm using my time there to work on my community service projects, primarily veteran's quilts (4 x 60) and QOV quilts. I have about 1 day of work left to finish the string quilts, well, except for the quilting but I can't take Willie to to sewing day.

I was time to get my next projects lined up.

These fabrics were all left over from the Patriot fabric palette in 2012. I've been saving them just for these projects. So while Chris was sick I loved the PC into the room with him and started planning some quilts. 

I started with some orphan blocks and came us with this for a veteran's quilt.

I have just enough of the turquoise to border the blocks and I have a 5" wide strip of the tie-dyed stripe. The sides are leftover edges of the patriot gradient. I'll add some pieces of dark blue and red at the bottom and top to make the quilt big enough.

This will be the QOV design. I have a lit of 1.5" strips of red for some reason and they will make great sashing. Both of these quilts should go together quickly and that will be a nice change of pace from the string quilts.

As I designed the quilts I would set aside the fabric for a specific part of the quilt in a pile.

When I was done I printed off the EQ images and made notes on the sizes of strips and pieces. I'm now ready for the next monthly mini-retreat.

QOV Block Drive

Have you wanted to participate in a Quilt of Valor but don't have time to make a whole quilt? Maybe you have time to make a few blocks and maybe you would like to also have a chance to win some free fabric!

Alycia is hosting a great QOV block drive with a great simple block. Look at that. It's like only 2 rounds of a log cabin block. What could be easier? The best part is that Alycia has the teams arranged to turn your blocks into great QOV quilts.

Need more incentive? How about a chance to win these hand dyed fabrics? For every 5 blocks you send to Alycia you will be entered to win these 6 Valentine-themed fat quarters.

Get the block and mailing instructions here.

See the blocks that are already coming in here.

You have until March 8!

A big day for the Country School Quilters

It has been a banner year for my little quilt group. You wouldn't expect a lot to be happening in a quilt group from a town so small that it's called a village. Last year we had an exhibit at the Virginia Quilt Museum. Then an essay that I wrote about what the group means to me was printed in Quilter's Newsletter. Last week we got another great surprise.

I shared with you the veterans quilts that we made for delivery in December. Since we meet at a facility that is owned by Hanover County Parks and Rec we invited the folks that we work with there to our December meeting. Apparently they were overwhelmed by the work we did so they did a little something for us! We were told that we were meeting that day with the county photographer for an article in the magazine that's published for county residents. I couldn't make the meeting that day but fortunately some of our members were able to be there. Take a look and see what happened!

Watch the video...

Next up for us is an exhibit at the Montpelier Center for the Arts in September. I guess I better get back to quilting so I have something to exhibit.