Welcome to those of you visiting from the Bloggers’ Quilt Festival! Today I’m sharing one of my all-time favorite quilts. I made this a couple of years ago for my dad. It commemorates his years in Boy Scouts, including shirts from his Cub Scout day camp, Philmont, and Wood Badge. It was also a huge milestone for me. I started out as a hand quilter, and this quilt was my first real attempt at seeing how far I could push my machine quilting skills.
The eagle applique at the top was inspired by Sarah Ann Smith’s book, Threadwork Unraveled. I had never attempted thread painting before, but it was tons of fun.
For the quilting in the sashing and borders, I used an all-over pebbling design. I used over a thousand yards of blue thread. In the sashing, I quilted the words of the scout law in the negative space, quilting the pebbles around stickers I made of each letter. Hopefully this will show up in the following pictures.
“Courteous” below the green patch at the bottom of this picture.
Fleur de lis in between the Wood Badge patches.
“Trustworthy” between these two patches.
In the border around the quilt, I used the same technique to quilt the Scout Oath. Here you can see the first line, “On my honor.” All of the quilting was done on my Janome Memorycraft 6600 machine. Have I mentioned before how much I LOVE that machine?! You can double-click on any of these pictures to see them larger.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out all the amazing quilts in the festival at Amy’s Creative Side.
You can comment on the quilts to be entered in drawings, and vote for your favorites. Enjoy!
This is a really special quilt. Thanks for sharing it!
what a nice tribute
margaret gunn
http://www.quiltsoflove.blogspot.com
I know someone who pops buttons every time he shows of the beautiful quilt! The photos are wonderful, but they don’t do it justice!!! Over the top!
This is a great quilt! That’s a lot of thread but the quilting is wonderful.
Wow! (I think I say that to most of your posts) This quilt is incredible, so proud of your dad and of you. I need to go visit it
That’s amazing!
nicely done!!!!
Ann
What a wonderful tribute quilt for your dad! Very nice.
What a great idea and beautiful execution.
What a cool quilt! Love the eagle!
What a great quilt! You pulled the themes together very nicely.
It IS gorgeous and Dad is “just a little” protective of it… =0)
great quilt!! remember being involved in scouting as a little girl when mom was a den leader and i argued with anyone who said i wasn’t a cub, too!! and was always my brother’s guinea pig as he practiced first air skills, then hubby and i helped our son through scouting and on to his getting his eagle; now, enjoy our grandsons being involved in scouting. what a lovely tribute to your dad and his scouting involvement! thanks for sharing and have a great day
What a fabulous tribute! Your thread painting looks terrific and the quilting is eye-popping! beautiful work!