I’m so happy to share my latest quilt with you… American Flag!

American Flag Quilt, completed August 2011

The design was inspired by Amy Smart over at Diary of a Quilter. As soon as I saw her quilt, I knew it would make the perfect gift for a family member.

Closeup of quilting, border and binding.

I added a gold border to the piece that Amy originally didn’t have. I was planning on also adding a white border around that, but once the gold border was on I felt happy with the size of it. The binding was made from leftover red scraps.

The quilting done on this piece was a simple double grid pattern (like Rita over at Red Pepper Quilts does). For this quilt I used 100% cotton batting — it was so much easier to quilt! Before, I was using polyester batting. It was just too high loft and difficult to work with. Although I do like the high loft look, I was so much happier to see no bunching when I was done with it! Another divergence from previous quilts — I used spray adhesive to baste as outlined in this tutorial. So the spray adhesive coupled with the low loft cotton batting made quilting this piece a BREEZE.

The back of the quilt.

I had a lot of left over fabric on this project that I didn’t see myself using for any other projects, so I decided to create a very pieced backing. In fact, the white and tan squares were originally cut to be an additional border on the front. However, once I laid them out with the flag design, the quilt top looked too muddled. The flag was lost in there. So I repurposed them for the backer. I loved pieced backs! Even though it adds more time to the project, I think it keeps quilts looking more interesting.

There you have it! I have to say, I really enjoyed this flag quilt experience. I’d love to make more (and I have more ideas pinned!) Have you made any flag inspired quilts?