Freedom Star Quilt

 I'm so excited to have this one finished!! My parents are coming this week and I wanted to have it done and hung up before they got here. A friend of mine also had a project she really wanted to get done so last Saturday we set up our machines and paraphernalia in the base chapel annex and sewed most of the day. By 4 pm we had two finished quilts!

A patriotic quilt has been on my quilt wish list for a while.   For the reason why see below. When it came to pick a pattern I was inspired by all the great HST star quilts I had seen in the last year. Some time ago I had purchased 6 Town Square Quilts charm packs and with a sheet (okay several sheets) of graph paper and colored pencils, I came up with a design I liked. 

 I intended it to be a wall hanging. Our base house has tile floors and concrete walls so it gets loud! Curtains and carpets in the living areas help absorb noise but there was nothing in the stairwell and it functioned as a huge echo chamber.

The backing is a Tradewinds fabric I purchased on sale. Its a lattice of bamboo and I have it in light green as well. A yummy fabric!

 This is my favorite block. That little dove with the olive branch in its mouth. You can see the quilting was just a simple straight line echo quilting along the lines of the star.

 I still wish the red in the binding were a bit brighter to match the red in the quilt, but I like the stars and think the navy background frames it well.

 The reason I wanted a patriotic quilt was I wanted to make a compliment quilt to this one. This quilt means a great deal to me. As you can see by the label below, it's a valor quilt. My husband was given this quilt at the end of his second Iraqi deployment. No, he was not wounded and I hope that it doesn't offend anyone that he owns a valor quilt without having been wounded.  He was and is a physician and he served in Iraq in that capacity.  The last week of his second tour he had to vacate his hooch (the term for the little trailer things they slept in) to make way for the next wave of medical staff. He ended up sleeping for a few days in the hospital where he had treated patients. The nurses gave him this quilt to use during that time and to take home with him. 

The quilt. is. beautiful. The backing is a text print of the Declaration of Independence and its quilted in a varigated red, white and blue thread. The front has these vintage looking boys and girls dressed in red, white and blue and holding flags. It's gorgeous.

That second Iraqi deployment above all his other deployments and TDYs and even his year in Korea was particularly hard on me, so this quilt symbolized to me a thank you for the sacrifices of military wives and families. I looked up the women who made this quilt and learned that Ruth Stonesifer was the president of the Gold Star Mothers. I am deeply grateful for both her and Nellie Conrad for making this and other quilts like it. I love this quilt. It is something I would grab if my house were on fire. And this is the quilt that inspired me to learn to quilt.

So now they both hang in my stairwell, my own little quiet(er) corner of patriotism.