Wounded Warrior Quilt

The Gateway Quilters' Guild sponsored quilts for the Blue Star Mothers of America "Quilts for Wounded" program. Here is the link that explains the purpose for these quilts:  http://www.bluestarsouthbayla.org/?q=node%2F254.

My quilt I named "Wounded Warrior" (not very original, I know) because not only is it destined for a service man or woman wounded in the line of duty, it has one block that is "wounded."

In other words, I messed up. And, unfortunately, I didn't catch it until after I took the picture.

Overall, except for that one little sign of individual "uniqueness," I was pleased with how my quilt blocks turned out.


I started with the fabric design I used as the backing. I also used it for the block centers and strips on either side of my blocks in front.




 

My original plan was to use this beautiful gold star on dark red fabric as the outside border with the inside border/sashing in the coordinating gold star on dark blue fabric. Then I realized the symbolism of the gold stars. Starting in World War II, women who had lost sons in combat were called "Gold Star Mothers" and displayed a gold star in their windows.

NO! NO! NO! That fabric would not do for quilts intended for wounded warriors. So, I searched for other patriotic fabric.

The quilts are 48" x 78" gurney quilts and designed to go with the wounded serviceman or servicewoman along with the coordinated pillowcase to the hospital bed.We were told to use bright, patriotic colors. No camouflage -- active service personnel get plenty of camouflage and tend to get sick of it.

This is my coordinating pillowcase. The body is of the same fabric as the quilt backing.

I quilted the layers together with white thread because I did not want to detract from the white star on white fabric in the squares. The rest of the quilt was so busy that I went with a plain navy blue binding. The following pictures show how I sewed on the binding. Even though I used a two-inch strip for my binding, I felt my machine finished binding turned out pretty well. A big part of the secret was that I used a quality cotton fabric.

First, I stitched the folded fabric to the front of the quilt using a 1/4 inch seam allowance.

 I pressed the binding flat on the front, then turned the quilt over, folded over the binding and pressed it in place on the back.

Next I pinned the binding on the front of the quilt so that, looking from the back, the pins barely caught the folded outside edge of the binding.

From the front, the pins were about 1/16 to 1/32 inch from the seam of the binding. It was just wide enough for the machine needle to stitch between the pin and the binding. I used both ball-head pins and butterfly pins. One nice thing about butterfly pins is that I can sew up to the bottom of the pin-head and easily grasp the butterfly wing with my fingernail to pull the pin out.

I have this nifty little presser foot with a quarter inch seam guide. The prongs also extend out front longer than most quarter inch presser feet which helps "grab" the next block as well as holds the fabric to the bottom gripper teeth. I use it to assemble my quilt blocks. It also worked well to help keep the binding from slipping out from under the presser foot while stitching. It was a pricy little item, but well worth it to me.

My finished binding. I like a narrow binding on most quilts. I was very happy with the straight seam that finished it.

I understand the theme for the Gateway Quilt Guild's quilt show next year is going to be based on veterans. I look forward to doing another gurney quilt for the Blue Star Mothers of America program. I also hope to put together a Civil War theme quilt although we no longer have veterans from that war still living.

Stupid Human Tricks

Kids, don't try this at home.....

I wanted some honey. My honey was in the refrigerator because we had an ant problem several months ago. So, I stuck my "honey bear" bottle in the microwave. What I should have done is set it for 10% or 20% power for only a few seconds until it softened. Instead, I put it on auto-defrost, thinking that surely that would be at a low setting. Guess again.

I opened the microwave after several seconds and my honey was bubbling. Okay, hotter than I wanted, but time to get it out. Just as I reached for the bottle, Honey Bear blew his top. Boiling honey spewed all over my shirt, all across the kitchen floor with the back of my right hand bearing the brunt of the eruption.

The microwave was a mess (This picture is post-clean-up.), the kitchen floor spattered and me coated better than a honey-glazed ham. But, I had the presence of mind to tip-toe through the hot honey drops on the floor and stick my hand under cold water for several minutes before I did anything else. Last night the hand was red and burned, but tolerable, thanks to several smear-ons of cortisone with aloe vera cream. This morning it was only pink with minimal pain, although I sported several large blisters. I spared you, dear readers, a picture of the blisters because it was not a pretty sight.

Last night, after changing all my clothes, I mopped the floor three times. This morning, my shoes still stuck to the tile. Let's hope the lesson sticks in my brain so I do not repeat this stupid human trick.

Blog Your Life

Today for the Salida Ward Relief Society Super Saturday I gave a presentation on blogging. No, I do not live in Salida. My daughter does. She was on the committee. When they said that some of the women wanted to learn more about blogging and they needed a teacher, guess who she called?

This is my little class. Sorry you missed it, T. Also, Susan, sorry to hear you suffered a re-injury recently and were unable to come.

As part of my training, I set up an entirely new blog while they watched. I tried out this background and really like it even though I am not a pink person. I liked it so well, you may note that I changed my wallpaper on Robyn's Echo to the orange version.

A few minutes ago when I went into this site to capture the image, I was going to delete the site afterwards. Then I noticed that I have had eight views. Eight views in only five hours? Maybe I will leave it up there and make something of it. The link is robynecholsstuff.blogspot.com.

I put a pdf file of my PowerPoint presentation on my website under the PRESENTATIONS page. I will leave it there until at least November 1, 2012. The web address for that is www.robynechols.com/testimonials.

I did pull some images from other blogs to use for examples. I apologize to any of those bloggers who feel I infringed on your copyright. I hope that with the understanding that this presentation was developed for non-commercial use that you will consider my using a portion of your blog as a form of free promotion for you and your site.