Map of the world-The USA

I'm always looking for new inspirations for my rag quilts and I definitely found it 
in the etsy shop mybeardedpigeon .  Her map of the world pillows are just so beautiful, the colors so vibrant!  When I found the USA Map Panel at my local fabric store, I just had to try a rag quilt with it.  I did not want to destroy the continuity of the map itself so I opted for sewing 9" seams down the map to mimic the 9" squares I usually do.  Then I wanted to highlight the vivid primary colors in the quilt so I found cottons and flannels  to match the colors in the quilt.    I bordered  the map with the colored squares. 

I used bright green minky on the back of the map, which kind of gave it a Lego look.  I gave this quilt to my friend who just began teaching 1st grade.  I imagine she may use it in her reading center.  Hopefully her students will absorb the geography as they cuddle on the USA.

White Wedding Rag Quilt

 

It was supposed to have been an eggplant purple quilt.  I had plenty of time to make it before my friend, Sam's wedding.  Of course, I fretted over the colors and took endless pictures of purple combinations but nothing seemed right.

It was one week before the wedding and my daughter, Summer, suggested a white wedding quilt, something special using all white fabrics.  She said that she wished she had gotten one for her wedding.  That really appealed to me as I had been wanting to make an all white quilt for some time.

As I was thinking/planning the quilt I got the idea to throw some purple in as a feature somehow.  I didn't want big purple squares  with the white so I thought a stripe of purple would be nice.  I wanted it around the edge but not on the outermost edge.

I drew it out on graph paper and then set about  cutting and sewing.  It was easy to do the mid-section since it was all whites and the four corners were white.  To get the stripe I had to cut and sew together a strip of purple to the white fabrics I had selected.  Each 9" square was always 3/4 white and 1/4 purple but the positioning of the purple was key to the stripe.

When I had it all sewn together I was very happy with the look of the stripe on the smooth side. I was still worried the fluffy side would have a more disjointed look but by the time I had it all cut, I couldn't be happier.

I got the White Wedding quilt for Sam finished about 20 minutes before leaving for her wedding.  I hope she likes it.  If you'd like your own white wedding rag quilt with your own stripe of color just go to ZeedleBeez

Good Grief! Complicated simple rag quilt

My family and I were at a local restaurant recently and the topic of conversation turned to my rag quilting.  I was beginning to try some different things and my children were offering up their ideas of what I should do next.  I had just completed a recycled/upcycled blue jean baby quilt and I was ready for my next challenge.



 My son, Tyler, suggested I make the American flag rag quilt which I filed away for a summertime project.  My daughter, Hayley, suggested I try a simple design, like what's on Charlie Brown's shirt.  That captured my imagination and I couldn't think of anything else.  All three of us took turns sketching it out on napkins:

       Finally, I had my pattern.  It looked simple enough.  Yellow for the top and black for the zigzag.  I chose a buttercup yellow cotton and unfortunately I didn't buy enough.  Of course they were out of buttercup at my local fabric store and also at the three others that I went to.  The 4th luckily had the dye lot of buttercup that matched mine so I was able to finish the quilt.

       I layered yellow fleece on the inside to make it thick and warm.  That's where the second complication set in.  I didn't want yellow to show in the black zigzag so I cut black fleece and positioned it next to the yellow in two triangles.  Then on the advice of my son, I used black thread on all the black squares and yellow thread on all the yellow squares.  I stitched the traditional X through all the squares even the two rows of half black, half yellow.  It took a long time to get it just right.  There was one spot that no matter how many times I took out the stitches and re-sewed I still got a bit of black thread showing on the one side of the yellow.

       Now it was ready to be cut.  I was so hoping that it would turn out the way I had envisioned. Here is a view of the quilt before it was cut:

And here is the fluffy side:

I think it turned out beautifully.  I heard that a choir director in CA received this quilt as a gift from cast members who had all signed the quilt.  They presented it to him after the final performance of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.