Modern Flag Quilt

So, it’s hard to take photos of a quilt top with a 2-year-old around.

This particular 2-year-old, for instance, loves to jump into the frame as her patient daddy — my patient husband — laughs and takes pictures.

About the best you can do is convince her to stand behind the quilt top with you…

…although that inevitably leads to her using the quilt top as a sheet to run around like a tiny ghost.

So then you can try pinning it up on the back fence, but it’s a really windy day and it won’t stay in place on its own.

Still, it turns out that the 2-year-old thinks that a quilt top flying in the stiff breeze — just like the flag it’s supposed to look like — is just about the most fun thing she’s ever seen.

And so you give up on trying to take any nice pictures of the quilt top, and just indulge her.

And fun is had by all!

This is my version of the modern flag quilt, a pattern I tested for Rebel Craft Media. I used Cotton + Steel basics for the red stripes (this bundle), blue star backgrounds (this bundle), and about half of the whites (bought as yardage). The other half of my whites are from a low volume bundle that Fat Quarter Shop doesn’t appear to have in stock anymore.

This was a fun pattern to test and I’m happy with the result. I thought it would be a really quick one to make since it’s basically just squares, but I underestimated the amount of time paper piecing takes! The 24 stars alone probably took me 8-10 hours, with another couple hours for the stripes (which were much easier to chain piece).

I only needed to complete the top for pattern testing purposes, and since I have a slew of other projects on my plate I don’t have any immediate plans to finish it off. This may be the first time I have ever made a top and not immediately then turned it into a finished quilt, and I don’t really intend for it to become a habit. I will finish this one off hopefully later this summer or fall when my sewing to-do list is a little shorter. I think quilting horizontal wavy lines across the whole thing would look neat!

There were actually two parts to this pattern — this flat quilt and a scrappy USA pillow. I’ll post some photos of my finished pillow tomorrow!