Potluck

A few months back my brother in law asked if I would make a flag quilt for his wife who will be retiring after 25 years with the Air Force.  I agreed and then forgot about it.  Well, we got the invite to the retirement dinner and ceremony this weekend, and I remembered .....more like:  Oh crap, I forgot, I gotta make a flag quilt!  So, I googled flag quilts and came across this one.

It's not really a quilt, it's more of an applique project, but I like this version and can embroidery her name, rank, etc. on the border.   So, today at lunch I'll hit up the local quilt shop for supplies.  Hope they have what I need!  Flag Quilt Instructions here   I'm open to suggestions and other ideas, so if you have any, please pass them along.  Her retirement ceremony is in early April, so I got about a month to put this together.

A few weeks ago a neighbor commented that she cannot find lady's hankies... I thought, well, I can make them, and use my embroidery machine.  Using my cotton batiste which I have a partial bolt of in my stash (it makes great summer dress linings); I cut out some 12x12 squares, and did some monogramming.  I need to work better on placement  but you can get the idea

It's also a great way to use of some of those remnant lace trims I have.   You can see that the monogram on the hanky in the back is too low, and the one on the front is too high.  I hoop both the batiste and some tear away stablizer.  I made a couple of more this weekend, and did a rolled hem on my serger using poly embroidery thread in the upper looper.  It makes a nice edge!   My neighbor loved them.  She walks, jogs, and cycles, and likes to carry a hanky when it's cold.  She said tissue falls apart and she can keep a hanky in her pocket.  I need to find some cycling and jogging designs that are  not too dense to put on a few. 

I also did some towels at Christmas time.  I used a heavy tear away stablizer in the hoop.  I didn't hoop the towel as it is too thick.  I used spray baste it on the stablizer and then placed the towel on top with a layer of clear solvy on top of the towel to keep the nap down on top.This top layer also helped with the constant thread breakage problem I was having.