Finally finished with the Marine Corps quilt!  This quilt has been made in honor of the Wounded Warriors Project – to find out more about the Wounded Warriors Project, you can go to their website here.  Actually, my quilt guild is making quilts to represent 5 branches of the armed forces.  These quilts will be donated to the church where we have our meetings, Olathe Bible Church in Olathe, Kansas.  They are hosting an event called Wheels ‘n’ Squeels BBQ Challenge – Warrior Edition on Friday and Saturday, August 2nd and 3rd, 2013.  Kansas City is known for its barbecue and barbecue challenges.  This event has BBQ teams competing for prizes, and they will also have a car show.  The Warrior Edition part of the event is to honor servicemen and servicewomen in several ways.  One of the ways will be giveaways.  Now, I am not sure if the quilts are going to be given away to service members of each of the represented branches of service, or if they will be auctioned off.  All I know is that proceeds from this event will go to the Wounded Warrior Project.  You can find out more about this event at the church’s website here.

Since my husband is a Marine (once a Marine, always a Marine… retired or not), I was asked to make the Marine Corps quilt.  You know the rest of the story from my “Month in Review” post.  Personally, I think it turned out well and am really loving it.  I wasn’t sure how the 50 stars would work out, but I think they “make” the quilt what it is, a nice quilt.  So, I have Susan to thank for her idea and all the hard work she and her helpers; Jackie, Diane, Sue, Karen, and Joyce put into the stars.  Here is the finished product.

And, here is a close up of the quilting.

You can see I did squiggly lines in the star blocks and a semi-flag into the background of the emblem center.  I used navy blue thread for the quilting on all of the quilt except the red center, where I used red thread.  I just wanted a hint of the quilting to show.

For the binding, I did it by machine with faux piping.  The reason I did this was because I wanted it to look like the red piping on a Marine’s dress blue uniform.

And, finally, the back…  This picture doesn’t show the pocket that is attached to the lower right-hand corner.  Susan made a little flag for the pocket, which is where I put a diagram of the stars and the states they represent.

That Marine Corps fabric is made by Robert Kaufman.  I got it at Hobby Lobby, of all places, and I used a 40% off coupon when I bought it.  Cool, huh?

I hope whoever gets this quilt is thrilled to get it, and I hope that the church and my fellow guild members are happy with the quilt and the effort that was put into the making of this quilt.