This quilt is for a special friend, a really interesting guy. When his wife told me she was making it, I actually begged her to let me quilt it. I said I would do a nice stars and loop pantograph on it, one I use for most Quilts of Valor that I quilt. When she let me have it, I was excited to be a part of this tribute.

The pattern she used is by Needle in a Haystack called Stars and Stripes.

I loaded the quilt, and began auditioning thread colors.

But the more I looked at it, I could see immediately the designs that would work well in a custom quilted design. The stripes were just begging for feathers. Rays of sunlight begged for straight lines. The stars wanted continuous curves. And nobody agreed on one color. I had to scrap the pantograph idea and give it the treatment it really wanted. And it really was what I wanted to do, too. I didn’t tell my friend that I was going to do this. She is pretty special as well, and I thought it would be a nice surprise. So, loading up a medium grey Glide on top, I stitched the edge of the quilt down, and began to do stitch in the ditch with a long ruler around the star blocks. I put a medium grey Bottom Line in the bobbin, and kept it through all the color changes on top.

Advancing the quilt, I continued stitching the sides down, stitching in the ditch around the rest of the stars, the center panel and the stripes.

One more advance to get the rest of the quilt at the bottom, and stabilize the bottom edge.

Then I did stitch in the ditch around the outside of the star blocks. I like this smaller ruler for that. This brings me back to the starting point in the corner.

Working out the thread path, I next went around the outer edges of the triangles on the star points first. This brought me back to the beginning point again. I did the curves freehand without a ruler.

Then I went around the inner edge on the star points, and the ditch around the center square.

And repeat.

After a few stars, I worked out that if I started on a common star point between two blocks, I could do both in one continuous line without tying off and starting again.

I did all the stars with this design in the star points.

As I was stitching on the stars, I did some of the center sections where the darker grey thread color made sense. On this center, I stitched around the flag and letters, but not the eagle. I’ll come back and get it later when I change to brown thread.

When I finished all the stitch in the ditch and the star points, I changed thread color to a light silver. I echoed the continuous curve in the triangles and squares around the stars.

Once again, I worked out a thread path to do the outer edges, then come back for the inner edges on both the triangles and the squares of lighter sky fabric.

Again, where there were two stars next to each other, starting on a common point meant I could do both blocks in one continuous path.

There were two triangle sections with the fabric beautifully fussy cut for the sun to be shining through the clouds in lovely rays. So, they had to have straight lines radiating from a central point.

Advancing the quilt on the frame, I came to the sky portion of the center panel. Still stitching with the light silver thread, I contemplated how to make a design that suggested clouds.

This took a bit of time, pulling out a pantograph for a basic idea, then trying to follow the line of the clouds in the panel.

I worked around the edge of the eagle to the bottom section of sky.

Changing the thread color to brown, the only brown I had that was the right tone was on a straight wound spool. I used a thread adapter to orient it correctly to come off the side rather than the top. This keeps it from twisting as it goes through the thread guides.

I stitched around the individual feathers on the large eagle, then went back to the little eagle inside a star block and got him done.

I changed the thread color to white, rolled the quilt back to the top, and did some of the interiors of the stars where there was a white background.

Then back down to the panel, I finished the eagle, once again following the feathers in the tail and on the head. I did a bit of the white lines on the flag, too.

At this point, I am about halfway through, working on it on and off for three days. Next time, I’ll show you the rest of the quilting.

Update – See the finish on this next post – QOV Custom Quilting Finish.