250 RWB (Lyra QAL) & TGIFF

I am so pleased to share the finished Lyra quilt, which I am calling 250 RWB, in honor of the 250th anniversary of our country. Now, I don’t make a lot of patriotic quilts, but I wanted one, and when I saw Lyra from Sandra Walker, I knew that was what I had to do.

And it is TGIFF – those few days when we celebrate our finishes! Join the party and link up your quilty or sewing finish for the week.

The Lyra QAL

As I mentioned, Lyra is from Sandra Walker of mmmQuilts! and is the annual celebration of her birthday and her father’s birthday. I have participated for 10 years, since 2017 when I started blogging in earnest. At the end of the post, I will show all my QALs from the past.

Meanwhile, you can find out the information here about this quilt along and even do your own. It is a fast quilt to make and I love the variations I have seen. Be sure to check out the linky party that is finishing up the beginning of next week.

April 3 – QAL Kick-off and Fabric requirements
April 10 – Cutting
April 17 – Green star points
April 24 – Square in a Square units
May 1 – Spiky star points
May 8 – Make blocks
May 15 – Make the sashing units and assemble the quilt top
June 15 – Quilt Parade – open for one week (ending around the June 23rd).

Quilting and Finishing

Here is where we left off, a top completed right before Memorial Day. I finished the top on a quilt retreat and knew I had to get moving. There is a variation between the background and the center background fabrics. The center one is a little darker shade of beige with tiny blue designs on it. The fabric was little lower contrast than would have been ideal, but, the guiding principal was to use my stash and I did. My plan is that the quilting will help bring this out.

I started with the dark blue points. This design was great, but you don’t see it, since I used a navy blue thread. Something a shade or two lighter would have shown it. I decided to live with it and move on. Now, you must realize that is placing 32 triangles but outlining the area and then placing the above design in it. You will see how this gets time consuming.

I also did the top and bottom border with this design, again, something not seen. In fact, I will show you the whole outline of the plan, which I did after I quilted it.

This illustration is a little garish, but I used the gold so you could see it. Now, I quilted the navy pieces in navy, the white on the outside in white and the red in red. I added blue to the center pieces to show the circle.

All of these were designs on ProStitcher and some of the names of them are: DWR Melon, Tear Drop Triangle, Inside A Triangle, Triangle Spiral and Rolling Along. I edited the design Triangle Spikes in the red diamond to make it smaller and remove the leading lines. All this means it was a lot of work.

Here it is before binding. I really love the way it turned out, and am glad that I spent a lot of time quilting. You may remember I took the Owl Class (here) and this helped with the placing of some of the designs. Honestly, I should have tested my first design, as it had a lot of overstitching. This will be a wall quilt so, it is not so important for this quilt but it took up more time than it should. I got a little freer and better and placing designs – a good thing.

And here it is with its binding on!

And this collage is all the quilts I have made following Sandra on her annual QAL!

Linky Party

And now it is your turn to show off your quilts and what you finished!

Coming Up on the Blog

I will do one more patriotic piece before the 4th of July. Plaidish is at the quilter and I have a few things for the annual porch sale in July to finish….but here’s a peak at what is coming up.

Wacky Stars Tablerunner
Plaidish
Napkins
Casco Bay Pillows

Linking Up

Finished or Not Friday

Fabric Stash

Prior YTD Fabric Used = 28 yards
Prior YTD Fabric Bought = 10 yards
Current Month Fabric Used = 4.5 yards
Current Month Fabric Bought = 3 yards
Net Fabric = -19.5 yards!