Star Spangled American Flag Squares quilt

I took on a commission for a close friend who wanted a quilt for her husband, who was turning 50. He’s an american who emigrated to Canada, so she wanted something red white and blue, and had given me about 3 yards of a flag fabric from Joanne’s, the fabric chain.

We decided to go with a simple 6″ patch in alternating squares of print / white. I used up some red and blue prints (mostly polka dots, some star prints) in my stash and had to buy some navy and the perfect red to go with the flag print. I had also pulled some red striped fabrics but could not make them work.

The white was just a slight creamy white instead of a bright white. For cutting the squares, I cut a 6″ strip across the width of the fabric then cut blocks from those strips.

Here I cut out all the squares I thought I needed but was off. Just by a little bit.

Here, I recovered and figured out where I wanted the various prints to show up. I wanted a lot of the flag print and then alternating red and blue diagonal stripes. This is what I called my “planned random” layouts and I usually get Ron to help.

Bob is an American who moved to Canada, and so I added two squares of maple leaf fabrics just for fun, in all those stars, stripes and flags.

Finally the top was done. From the remaining white, I added a 6″ border. The rest of the white was left for the backing.

I don’t have a picture of the back when I pieced it, but there was just not quite enough of the white for the back so I knew I’d have to piece in some prints as well. I wound up with narrow print strips on the sides, which you’ll see in the finished pics below.

Here I basted on the tabletop. I’ve had issues with basting and stretching the backing fabric too much and always getting something folded over. Rolling it up and smoothing out a couple feet at a time worked pretty well here.

I quilted it on my Bernina using the free motion quilting foot. I choose this stars and swirls design from Happy Quilting and had to keep pacing myself to keep it light and open. I really didn’t want to wind up with a lot of dense quilting because it was taking forever at this point.

It was also hot and August. By this point, I was working on this quilt and nothing else for the two or three weeks leading up to Bob’s 50th birthday.

I really was liking how it was turning out tho.

More quilting shots from the back.

Finally, I got to the binding! Cheryl, Bob’s wife, had given me 3 yards of the flag fabric to work with, which was plenty, so I used it for binding as well.

We were going for a size for Bob to use in his recliner. He has a disability so he’s in his chair quite a bit and loves to cuddle up under a blanket. This wound up roughly queen size, but no one ever said a quilt was too big!

Bob absolutely loved his quilt. He was surprised when we showed up to his birthday party and was even more surprised to see the quilt his wife commissioned. He’s been a huge fan of my quilting ever since we were neighbours, but circumstances changed and both our families have moved. When Bob found the two squares of maple leaf fabrics, he laughed quite a bit.

I did make a custom label for this quilt, which is something I usually forget. I do have a picture but for some reason can’t upload images directly from my computer. The images above I imported from my Instagram account where I took progress pics. Bob follows me on Twitter so it was hard not to talk about this quilt there.

But now here is the post. If you do a quilt similar to this, I’d love to see it. I’ve done variations of this layout for baby quilts three times now. Just vary the prints and block size or amount, it’s super fast with a charm pack.