Autumn Stars & Stripes Quilt

This is my brother and sister-in-law with the quilt I made for their wedding gift (2007).  This was a pattern I found in one of my magazines or books (I can't remember).  He loves the patriotic theme, she loves autumn colors, so I thought it was a good design for them.

 

Here's a close-up of the design.  It was a pretty simple pattern to do.  I think the hardest part was picking out the right fabrics.  There are three different reds and three different whites used.  I had to also find the right shade of blue for the star blocks.

Here it is again in the vertacle position.  I don't have any other pictures of this quilt or close-ups of the quilting.  I sent it out to a professional quilter and she did custom quilting on it.  She outlined all the stars and quilted a leaf design in the large open areas.  It came out really nice.

I guess one of the things I can say I learned making this quilt is that it is much easier to keep nice sharp points on a star block if it is "floating" on its background.  If you look at the close-up photo, you can see what I'm talking about.  This pattern was designed so that the points of the stars do not come right up to the edge of the seams where the dark blue meets the other fabrics.  There is a little "wiggle room" worked into the pattern, which makes it a LOT easier to make sure those points don't disappear into the seams.

Now that I am cataloging all my quilts in this blog, I have also learned how important it is to take a lot of pictures of the quilts I give away BEFORE they leave my house.  Unfortunately, I have given away a lot of quilts that I have minimal, if any, pictures of.  The pictures I do have are typically of the top and that is all -- no close-ups and no pictures of the backs or labels.  One of these days, I may ask my family to gather up the quilts I have given to them and, armed with my camera, take lots of pictures!