Soft Flag Quilt

Have you ever wanted to have a quilt just for the 4th of July? Here's the story of how I made Villa Rosa's patriotic quilt pattern with a chenille backing, including my tips and tricks, as well as what to avoid.

In my childhood, we watched our small town's fireworks display from a blanket spread out on the grass at the park. I have such fond memories of laying back on quilts while we enjoyed the booming fireworks show overhead with family and friends.

My 4th of July nostalgia for laying on quilts has come full circle at my own house. Now, we have a very nearby firework show we can see well from our back yard. Every summer, we invite friends over, I pass out blankets, and we all sit together to watch.

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When I saw the Villa Rosa Designs pattern card at my local quilt shop, I loved how scrappy the Liberty Quilt could be. I was taken with the softer colors they used in their photo. I loved the chambray blue.

I decided to make the quilt so I would could use it at our annual 4th of July party!

The Fabrics

I collected colors at several local fabric stores to make sure I had lots of options to make it scrappy. I even used a pair of old jeans!

Upcycled denim tip: super stretchy denim is trouble for quilting. Keep as close to 100% cotton as you can get.

I gathered chambray blues, pinky reds, and a variety of whites. My whole palette was softer than traditional patriotic primary red and navy blue.

The pattern is fat quarter friendly. Here are some fabric bundles in the chambray blue & pinky red colorways.

I found the funnest terry chenille backing, which I adore, even though it complicated getting it quilted.

The problem fabrics:

denim- your machine will need to be able to sew it smoothly with cottons. Thick denim could make the piecing a bit trickier. Your sewing and quilting will require a heavy duty needle.

white flannel- this would be fine for the strips, but it had a little too much give for the small triangle piecing. I think flannels are lovely, but work best in larger pieces in quilts.

50/50 red & whites- if your fabric reads as precisely half red, half white, it won't have enough definition to suggest the color layout of a flag. The same applies to blue & white fabrics- one color needs to dominate visually. I bought several prints that I couldn't use because they didn't read as mostly either red, blue, or white.

The chenille backing- my quilter was afraid that the directionality of machine quilting would lay the chenille down too much, so I had to quilt it myself.

I would still totally do the denim, chenille backing and white flannel strips again.

I'm just warning you these fabric choices can complicate things!

How to do this an easier way

Stick to traditional red, white, & blue! Your local quilt shop will have plenty of bold colors.

(Remember, this quilt is fat quarter friendly!)

Here is a Robert Kauffman patriotic bundle of solids from Kona.

Moda has a cheery Americana fat quarter bundle

If you love dustier, folksy colors, check out Robert Kaufman's Americana bundle.

How big is this quilt?

It is the perfect size for snuggling on the couch. Charlie approves.

It covered the whole width of my dining table and even draped off the sides a little by the time I made my quilt sandwich.

I found a series of videos that walked me through each step of making this quilt. Keep that in mind when you begin a commercial pattern. There may be tutorial videos available!

I started sewing this quilt at a K bar K Sew and Stay retreat. Having time to sew and a flannel design wall was wonderful!

Piecing

The stars were a little more complicated than I bargained for. Someone told me that just because the pattern is small doesn't mean it's easy!

Below is an ironing station at the retreat. A wide ironing board is on my quilting wishlist.

Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty repetitive. For these stars to look their best, you need to carefully line up their points as you sew.

Pro Tip:

When matching triangle points in the middle of a block seam, place a pin vertically through the 2 points to line those up.

Design Tip

There are 6 white stars in the middle of the blue rectangle. I rotated my blocks so that my darkest blue triangles were against the big stars. This helped to visually outline them and make them pop a little more.

Number the Blocks

When you have your blocks laid out like you want, number them with your fabric pen. The first block in row 1 will be 1-1. The second block in row one will be 1-2, and so on. Even with a design wall right behind me, I was glad I took the time to do this numbering. It will keep you from losing your intended layout.

Important Flag Etiquette

If you plan to hang this flag as a display (I did not), you need to swap which side the blue block is on. The blue block needs to be on the left side if you wish to hang it. See how mine would be wrong?

I also thought it would be interesting to back this quilt top with a vintage flag, until I learned that a U.S. flag is never supposed to be repurposed into any other item. It should only ever be a flag.

Quilting

My plan was to have someone else quilt it, but because of the backing, I needed to do it myself. I doubled the batting, so I took care to pin my quilt sandwich together well.

Between the doubled batting and chenille backing, this is a pretty heavy quilt.

I quilted this entire thing on my vintage Bernina Record 830! It has a 7" throat and I made it work.

General Quilting advice is that you alternate the directions you stitch from. This meant turning the quilt around for each pass, alternating rolling the quilt up inside the throat area.

This was a fantastic pain.

Sticking to the creative vision was just a labor of love.

I stitched in the ditch along the stripes. Because I was quilting the stripes in red or white thread, I let my stitching travel off the edge of the top and turned on the batting until I got to the next same color set of stripes. I made this sort of U turn on the batting so I didn't have to cut and restart the thread every row.

I kept my bobbin thread color blue to match the backing. The stitching really isn't noticeable on the back.

The Binding

I chose a pretty little blue calico because a busy little print can help hide any mis-stitches. This is Lily sleeping under my ironing board while I pressed the binding.

I spaced the clips really closely together so the binding wouldn't budge. I only had enough clips to hold half the binding in place at a time.

Don't be like me. Get a whole jar full of clips.

I used a straight edge and drew a line with a fabric marker from tip to diagonal tip on the white stars. Then I straight stitched across my drawn lines.

As I stitched across the blue rectangle, I tried to find a path that would let me zig-zag right and left around triangles as I generally moved from the inside toward an outside edge.

I was delighted with my finished quilt, even though it took more time than I figured it would.

Thanks for reading my quilt story!

Have you done a patriotic quilt? Tell us about it in the forum!

Much love,

Holly