All American Quilts

Americana - the idea that there are certain things that just have the United States posted all over them. Americana could be the old fashioned glass Coke bottles or the experience of an A&W Root Beer Float. Any number of things may say Americana to any number of people. I see certain fabrics as Americana style fabrics - usually hand woven with deep blues, reds, and creams (not quite white, but not so much beige). Something like this collection of fabric here:


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A few years ago, I received a Christmas gift from one of my great aunts. She was really into quilting at the time, and wanted to, seemingly, share her joyous activity with me. She gave me 12 pieces of fabric foundation and the two blue fabrics.

A fabric foundation piece is just a piece of fabric with a pre-printed quilt design. In order to use it, you cut a piece of fabric large enough to cover the area, sew along the pre-printed line, fold the fabric back against the seam so it is face up, and then put another piece of fabric down. You would continue this until the block is completely covered. So I used the two blue fabrics to do the 12 foundation pieced blocks.

They turned out something like this:

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Of course the two blue fabrics were really dark and slightly gloomy. With a quick trip to the fabric store, and a briefly created theme, this became a light Americana quilt. I found a light beige fabric with tiny red flags on it.
I bordered and sashed the blocks, and made the quilt top as large as a lap quilt ever should be (about 62" x 70"). My mom found a great red and beige hounds tooth printed fabric for the back. The red pulls out the red in the front, and the soft and uneven feel of the handwoven fabric adds that extra bit of Americana to the quilt.

This is what it looks like now.

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After adding the binding and a quilt label, this quilt will be done and ready to ship out.