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Stars and Stripes from Leftovers

When I finished piecing this UFO at the end of 2024…

I had these pieces leftover:

Leftover pieces from the Domino UFO quilt

There were quite a few of them, and they aren’t in colors and patterns I use very often, so I decided to experiment with turning them all into a wallhanging.

Since it’s patriotic colors, and they were already in stripes, I decided to play around with the pieces and see if I could make a flag quilt.

I have always used graph paper for all my quilt designs, but lately I have been experimenting with Adobe Illustrator. So I created a file that contained representations of all the pieces, and played with them until I decided on something that used them all up.

Planning with Adobe Illustrator

I did have to piece these additional stars.

I had to create these stars.

I was glad for the equation on my free downloadable HST chart as each HST is 1.5″, which is not a standard size. By using the equation I was able to piece these stars so they will fit with the stripes.

Next step was to cut out all the pieces for the ‘background’. I divided the design up on my printout to ensure I didn’t have any weird seams.

My notes to decide how best to piece

After I cut all the background pieces I laid everything out:

Laying out all the pieces

As I pieced, I made numerous notes and corrections…reminding me why designing quilts and making good clear patterns is such a challenge (one I love, but still a challenge).

Lots of notes to keep track of it all.

Putting all the pieces in the right place was quite the project. Since I only have a black and white printer, I used both my highly scribbled upon piece of paper plus the color version on my iPad to guide me.

a tablet with a screen on it next to a piece of paper
I needed the color version on my iPad as well my notes

But it slowly came together.

One strip at a time

Since the leftover pieces were often the ones that were cast aside because they weren’t quite perfect, I ran into lots of instances where I needed to make trimming decisions. If I’d tried to make things fit to plan I would not have had a flat top.

Leftovers were often the ‘bad’ pieces from the original quilt and needed trimming so everything lay flat.

But I used my patience to push on…

Almost done!

And was finally done. After cutting binding strips I had very little fabric to absorb into my stash.

Ready for quilting 🙂

It’s not the flattest quilt top I’ve ever made, but considering all the gyrations I went through I’m pleased. It was a fun challenge and I learned a lot about how to plan something like this.

Including the fact that the piecing part (not including all the design prep work) took a full 12 hours over 4 days.

It also will provide a great opportunity for some fun custom quilting on all that background blue.

It may be a bit before I quilt it as I have a backlog of practice tops to longarm first. But as I work on my longarming skills, I’ll do a lot of playing, again on my iPad, to decide on a quilting plan.

If you’re on my email list, you’ll get updates!

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