american retirement quilt

I finished it!  This quilt is a gift for my sister's co-worker who is retiring next week.  My sister wanted to give a patriotic quilt because this co-worker has an entire room dedicated to patriotic and Americana memorabilia.  Pretty neat.  So hopefully this quilt fits right in.  I think that quilts should be worn and used, but I have a feeling this one will be hung.

I used this wonky star tutorial from Silly BooDilly for the stars.  I like these but I think I went wonky overboard on some of them.  I also used wonky stripes in the flag.  I did this because I wanted to add touch of modernism to the quilt design.  I'm not a traditional person, but the recipient might be.  So I tried to keep the design more traditional but still add touches of my own personality.

Again, I had trouble deciding how to quilt it.  To stick with the patriotic theme, I quilted a few stars on the flag.  I cut a star from cardstock and quilted around it.  I then quilted an outline a few times around each star to add more depth.

I decided to quilt around the stars on the flag using an all-over leaf design.  The leaves inside the flag are simple, a smaller and tighter design than outside the flag.

I had an especially hard time deciding on the quilt design for the stars outside the flag, but ultimately I decided to continue the leaf theme.  This leaf design isn't as tight as the design inside the flag, so I was a little worried about how it would turn out.  I like the tighter designs because they look better to me when washed.  But I think this design turned out really well.  I would quilt this leaf and stem design again.

The back is nothing special.  I bought 108 inch beige paisley fabric for the backing, but I used so much on the front that I ran out when it came time to make the back.  So I had to piece some scraps from the front fabrics to make a backing large enough.  But we will pretend it was intentional.

I think this quilt turned out pretty good.  I really hope she likes it.  This is the first quilt I made for someone who wasn't part of my family.  Family has to like what I make...