Stars and Stripes is FINISHED!!

This quilt started months ago... It is my first "Commissioned" quilt.  Back in February, my boss announced that he was going to retire.  I had seen this quilt and immediately knew it would perfect for him, and so I approached my fellow managers and proposed that they pitch in to cover the material costs, and I would to do the quilting work.

Jim is a retired Marine who entered the business world many years ago.  He is a very patriotic man who loves his country, his God, and his family.  I have worked for Jim directly or indirectly for 19 of my 26 years since High School.

I have learned more than I can even begin to tell you while working on this quilt.  It has been a learning experience.  It has been a major pain in the neck.  (Literally, as I had to cut and re-cut so many triangles and squares.)  But it has also given me great Joy, and a huge sense of accomplishment.  This is the largest quilt I have done thus far, and large quilts no longer scare me.  I have realized the importance of fabric choice and color matching.  There are 29 different fabrics in this quilt.  It took a long time to find them all, but it was time well spent.

So, here it is, "Stars and Stripes" FINISH number two this week!!

My shadow makes this look smaller than it is!  It is 80x80.

A close up of one of the stars.
I chose to quilt the bottom with tan thread and the top with thread
to match.  This "hides" the quilting a little bit, or at least the quilting
isn't highlighted or emphasized this way.  It's not that I was concerned
about my meandering, but I didn't want the quilting to take away from
the impact of the quilt as a whole.  I think I accomplished that.

Another view of one of the stars.  Note the bottom left corner of the star,
and the half square triangle above it... Same Fabric!  Darn it.  I tried to
never have the same fabric right next to the same fabric.  I made this
mistake three times.  Oh well, there were 1,152 triangles in the top, I guess
3 mistakes isn't too bad.

Again, same colored thread means the quilting isn't too pronounced,
however, you can see that this thing has a LOT of quilting on it.

The Binding that you might think was custom ordered for this quilt!
It took me several weeks to find it, but I nearly jumped for joy when I
did, as it is perfect for this quilt!!

I didn't think to photograph the process of attaching this, but is
a double sided fusing with the edges hand sewn.  I do not like hand
sewing.  Mostly because I am not good at it.  I would have loved
for this to be blind stitched, but I can't blind stitch to save my
life, so I didn't even try, I just did a neat little over and under stitch.

 I can't wait to give it to Jim on Thursday.  I want those who contributed to be happy with my work, and I want Jim to like it even more.  We'll see...

Until Next Time,
Paul