Red, White and Blue QUILT

A week before Jackson was born, I decided to make a quilt!

I went to JoAnn's down in Fayetteville and spent about three hours there picking out the PERFECT fabric.  I went there to get RED, WHITE and BLUE fabric.  We saw a quilt that faded from orange to blue and wanted to do one like that with red, white, and blue.  It would be the perfect picnic quilt.  After I was done picking out those SEVENTEEN fabrics I spotted some awesome orange, green, yellow and blues that would make another AWESOME quilt...so I got those too!

the poor lady who had to cut all of those fabrics.

I guess you could say it was my NESTING phase.

TWO quilts.

I borrowed a sewing machine from the Relief Society, bought myself a birthday gift of a cutting board, ruler and rotary cutter (for an awesome price by the way!)

And I was ready to spend my days cutting and sewing!

Here is a lay out of the red white and blue fabrics.

In the back you can see the orange, green, yellow, and blue quilt.

I just love the look of fabric.

What has come over me?

I remember the day when I would walk into a fabric store and be scared of all of those fabrics not knowing what to do with them.

Thank you Morgan for changing my views on fabric and teaching me how to quilt.

It has become one of my favorite things to do!

 YES!  I cut out each and every one of these squares...plus some extras.

Andrew had to lay them out for me...because I am one week from delivering a baby!

I couldn't exactly bend over!

 The next couple of days I spent sewing the squares together...

ironing...and sewing some more.

Finally the TOP of the quilt was all sewn together.

It looks pretty awesome...huh?

I am WAY proud of myself.

I am extremely proud of how I was able to match up all my corners.

Pretty good for my second quilt.

The back we decided to do a line of all of the colors.

Made the back more interesting.

We then decided it would be WAY awesome to quilt it with STARS!

A TON OF STARS!

It is such a great idea...but REALLY...STARS?!?

How many stars am I going to have to sew here.

I have started, so I will continue.

I didn't really work on the quilt very much after Jackson was born.

I did however, put together the other quilt top before we left Arkansas.

I had many deadlines to get this quilt done...but the STARS were SOOO tedious.

We decided to sew WALKER in the strip on the back and do stars in between all the letters.  Then we decided to do stripes on the back, to make it look like a flag, AND that way I didn't have to do STARS on the ENTIRE quilt.

I worked on it from time to time.

I still didn't have it done.

Andrew was starting to wonder if I would EVER get this quilt done.

I was starting to wonder the same thing.

We said I couldn't start NEW projects until I was finished with this quilt.

I "kinda" stuck to that.

but I did do some NEW projects along the way.

FINALLY, Andrew was about to finish school.

I thought what a great time to finish the quilt...

A month before Andrew graduated I started to REALLY work on this quilt.

I worked on it every Tuesday and Thursday when Andrew was at school.

He had no idea I was working on it.

A couple days before I was going to give it to him, he asked, "Margie, are you ever going to finish this quilt?"  I thought for sure he knew what I was up to!

Luckily, when I gave it to him on the Tuesday he was all done with his classes and assignments, he was extremely SURPRISED!  I was sooo happy.

He had NO idea I had even been working on it.

So here it is...the finished quilt!

The FRONT!

The BACK!

Close up of the quilting.  You can't really see the WALKER, but believe me...it is there!

Another close up of the stars.

I was so excited when I did the very LAST star.

A huge accomplishment.

Of course it isn't perfect, but I am getting better on each and every quilt I do.

The binding is still the thing that gives me the most problems, BUT this one was much better than the last one I finished.  So I am improving.

9 months AFTER Jackson was born, 

I AM FINALLY DONE WITH THE QUILT I STARTED A WEEK BEFORE HE WAS BORN!

It is the perfect picnic quilt!

Now onto the NEXT project!