Quilts of Valor New Year's Day Sit and Sew

Wow, this must be a record for me: three posts in one day!

Yesterday when I was looking at some of the blogs who were linked to Judy's Design Wall Monday, I read about the "1st Annual Quilts of Valor New Year's Day Sit and Sew." This is an invitation to quilters to make a quilt top for Quilts of Valor (QOV), an organization that gives quilts to soldiers wounded in war. Then I saw that Judy had posted a free pattern to make a QOV. I decided at the last minute to jump in, since I have lots of patriotic fabrics which I bought for my All Star quilt. This will be my first QOV quilt.

This large bin is full of my patriotic fabrics. Yesterday I looked through it to find the fabrics I want to use, then I ironed them and started cutting my strips.

Here are my strips sewn together into sets, ready to be cut into units for the blocks.

So far I have finished all the blocks with a blue "frame." This photo is just a representation of what I've done. I'm hoping to get the red-framed blocks pieced tonight also, but I needed to take a little break from the studio.

I'm really liking the way these blocks look. This is a great pattern for this project. Quick and easy and fabulous-looking when you use a lot of scrappy fabrics! I'm so thankful to Judy for giving us this pattern on her blog. This would also be a good pattern for a new quilter to learn some basics, since it doesn't have any angles.

Happy stitching!