Patriotic Rail Fence Quilt

Last month I was talking to a fellow guild member and she happened to mention that she was working on a quilt for a lady that goes above and beyond to support our troops.   She also mentioned that she was under a time crunch to get it finished and she was worried about quilting it on her home machine.  The little hamster on my wheel started doing overtime. I had to volunteer to quilt it for her. I knew I could load it and quilt it much faster than pin basting and quilting on a domestic machine. She was super happy with the idea so it was meant to be.

I initially told her I would stipple it.  Here’s the thing….I just couldn’t bring myself to stipple this quilt.  I wanted it to be special since the recipient goes above and beyond to take care of our troops. After all, my hubby is one of those troops.

I pondered a few ideas and finally decided on a plan of action.  I only had 1.5 days to get it finished so I didn’t have a lot of time to ponder. Good thing my hamster was still working overtime because I like to ponder things for much longer.

Here’s a look at the finished quilt.

I quilted feathers in each rail fence block and alternated the direction of the feathers.  The directional feature is much easier to see on the back.

Originally, I planned on using red thread in the red fabric.  Roscoe had other ideas.  He was shredding the red thread faster than I could thread him.  So, I gave up and used white thread in the red and white fabric and blue thread on the blue fabric.

A close up of the feathers.

I love doing swirls in the borders.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of this very special quilt.  I really enjoyed quilting it and I hope she loves it.  I know my guild friend was extremely happy with the quilting.  And she was pleasantly surprised since she expected stippling.

I’m on a roll…I’ve blogged 3 times in a week.  Woohoo!