Flowers for John Herman

I haven't posted quilt photos for a couple of weeks, but it wasn't because I wasn't quilting - so I'll try to make up for it here. The Civil War Sesquicentennial quilt for Roger and Laurie went under wraps while I completed putting the blocks together and then quilting it, so that I could take it to Chicago with me this past weekend.


I have to post some photos to show the quilting I did, so here are a collection that I took while I had the quilt up on the display stand outside -


Since I posted the story of each block as I made it, I'll just talk about my quilting choices.

I knew I wanted to quilt feathers in the outer border and setting triangles, seen at the top of this next photo.


Some of the blocks got feathers, some got straight lines, some got a combination. And some were just stitched in the ditch of the piecing lines.



When there was a distinct background that I didn't want to play up with straight lines, I used a basic machine-quilting meander. Larger flower motifs that were fussy cut were quilted as though they had been appliqued.


I'll finish this series with this closest crop. The quilting in the sashing strips was the trickiest thing I did. Long diagonal lines (actually quilted in a zig-zag pattern back and forth) are just challenging. There's a meander fill between the two lines, which are spaced about 1/2 inch apart.


I took a photo of the quilt label when I checked to see if I could fit it in my rolling carry-on suitcase. It may not appear so, but there was actually some room to spare. However, my family had to see me in the same pair of bluejeans all weekend.

The title of the quilt, Flowers for John Herman, comes from the floral motifs of my fabrics, which were emphasized for Laurie the horticultural therapist. I dedicated the quilt to our great-grandfather who fought for the Union with the 82nd Indiana Regiment.

Laurie says the backing fabric, visible in the photo above, matches the bedroom paint color. I had not been upstairs in her beautiful home, just on the lower floor, so that was a happy choice.

Usually since we live away from family, I mail my quilts out. This time I wanted my own photo of the recipients with the quilt. Roger decided they should hold it up and recruited nephew Andrew to help. Andrew was lucky to get some height genes from his Mom.