The Fourth of July Quilt

My hometown is a Fourth of July town. I've blogged about it several times; here's one of them. We stopped attending the pool activities many years ago. But our kids and their kids are faithful regulars at the morning program and often come home sporting ribbons earned through the three-legged race. Or some such.

A couple of weeks ago I started preparing for the picnic that we host between the parade and the fireworks. We'll have about twenty or twenty-five people here; Joe will cook the brats and set off his fireworks while we wait for the ones that the Patriotic Association provides to begin (9:15 p.m.)  I've bought the paper goods and considered any additions or substitutions to the standard menu. It's going to be great.

For a long time, I've thought I'd like to have a special patriotic quilt to drape in the living room from mid-May until after Labor Day. It would, of course, be thought of as the Fourth of July Quilt. I'd pretty much settled on a pattern that had about a dozen flag-type blocks, with traditional quilt designs (think Sawtooth Star) in the blue field, but never quite got started. Sometime in the past year I discovered Amber Johnson's pattern and was smitten. I bought a copy and before I went out to get the fabric I'd need, she published a variation with an off-color off-white background instead of the blue in the original and had for sale a little kit with fifty different reds and fifty different blues. Oh, my. I omitted the heart Amber's prescribed in favor of another star and before I knew it, I was off to the machinist with the Fourth of July Quilt in tow. I told her I thought quilting stars would be nice and she dazzled me with a pattern of stars and fireworks! I've actually begun to feel patriotic again.

Here, in case you need a Fourth of July Quilt too, is what Amber's original color way looks like. And a close-up of those fireworks along with a teensy bit of the binding.