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My brother and sister, who have both done a bit of genealogical research, tell me that members of my family fought in the Revolutionary War. Some fought (on both sides) in the Civil War as well. My father was a soldier in World War II. When I made this quilt and named it Patriotic Road, it was as sort of a tribute to the blood shed by my own family members to ensure my freedom. I am deeply grateful.
Yesterday's post was sort of an experiment with using flickr as a source for uploading pictures to my blog. I'm not sure the the experiment had a very successful result,
but then again, it may have just been the fault of the experimenter herself, who doesn't really know what she is doing most of the time!
Today I wanted to share with you a little bit about this scrappy red, white and blue quilt.
The quilt is my rendition of Bonnie Hunter's 3rd on-line mystery quilt, Tobacco Road, which I finished last October. (It sat for awhile before I actually quilted it.)
As you can see, there are many small pieces in this pattern. The color scheme evolved from my desire to use up many of the reds lurking in the depths of my scrap boxes even though I did not know how the final quilt would look.
Since Bonnie's patterns always involve strip piecing techniques , it was not really as labor intensive as it looks. Using the red bricks to separate the pinwheels and squares was a "new-to-me" design and required concentration when it came time to lay the parts out on the design wall (tablecloth). When I finally got around to the actual quilting I decided to try to stitch a sort of"stars and stripes" effect.
A fellow mystery quilter noticed my patriotic color scheme from a photo I posted on the Quiltville website and mailed me fq's of "democrat" and "republican" fabric for the back! Add leftover pinwheels and four patches, star backing fabric and striped binding to the mix and you've got one Patriotic Road! The original pattern was for a bed sized quilt, but I ended up making a wall hanging size so still have more pinwheels and squares in my "parts" drawer. Believe me, I'll use them sometime, somewhere!
I photographed the quilt on a wagon wheel used by my great grandfather.
Have you heard about the Quilt Festival? Since I for one loooovvvee a quilt show, this will be so much fun! I'll tell you about the quilt that I decided to enter, then take a look at others here.
Several years ago, right after I first discovered quilting blogs, I came upon a blog by the name of Quiltville. You may be familiar with Bonnie Hunter and her great ideas for using your stash to make scrap quilts. Her blog features many free patterns to try as well as ideas for stash management. At one point, one pattern turned into an online "mystery quilt" series. I was hooked right from the start.
Over the next couple of years I participated in four of Bonnie's quilt mysteries. She gave us the rough fabric requirements, urging us to try to use what we had in our stash. Then, over the next days, and sometimes weeks, she led us through the steps to make a pieced jewel of a quilt. All along, we never knew what the finished quilt would look like until the final "reveal".
Such excitement, I'm telling you! Bonnie set up a special site for mystery quilters to post pictures of their progress. I loved looking at what fabrics everyone was using. The quilt I am showing you today is the last mystery quilt that I created with Bonnie.
It is probably my favorite of the four that I participated in. Bonnie called the pattern Double Delight. My rendition is called Peppermint Delight because the colors remind me of peppermint candy somehow.
Bonnie loves small pieces in her quilts and is especially partial to using 1.5 inch strips to piece little 9 patches.
For now, I am thinking that my career as a mystery quilt maker is probably over , but it sure was fun and I have four lovelies made with scraps from my stash. That means room for more fabric. ......Right?!
Have fun feasting on the eye candy at the Quilt Festival!
