A Victory Quilt--Ruth's Folk Art Dolls

This is something Ruth asked me to quilt last fall before she had to take several weeks off from quilting. I finally finished it today. It will be passed on to someone else who will sew the second side of the binding, but at least my part is finished.

Among the unanticipated benefits of making Victory Quilts are that I take a few more risks than I would take when creating an heirloom (although I realize that for some families a Victory Quilt can become an heirloom) and that I experiment with new ideas that I've not used before.

In the close-ups of the borders and sashing below are some quilting designs I haven't used for a while or that I designed to be used on this quilt.

Another risk I took on this quilt was using much bigger stitches for quilting.



I don't know if I like the bigger stitches much, although I can certainly acknowledge that the quilting went faster because of them. I do like some of the design variations in the patterns of the quilting stitches and need to take better close-ups of them so I'll have a record of them after I pass the quilt on, probably tomorrow at church.

Ruth pieced this quilt top from VIP/Cranston prints from the 1980's, and the prints were actually a light blue, a medium blue, and a pink that leaned toward peach.

A funny thing about this quilt is that although I originally thought of it as Ruth's Folk Art Dolls, I'd barely begun to quilt it when in my mind, at least, it became "The Segregation Quilt" because the African-American angels were in one column and the caucasion ones were in the other--something unintentional on Ruth's part, occuring because she had three of each doll, bordered two of each in one color and one of each in a second color, and then when she put them together, they ended up "segregated."
It will be dedicated at our congregation's next prayer quilt Sunday and shortly thereafter will be blessing someone facing some serious health challenges.

Now I can mark it as my first 2009 completion and move on to the other quilt which is a current priority but not yet even a finished top because I'm too short on fabric to do what I orginally intended to do with the border.

Hmmmmmmm......