Another Quilt of Valor

I just finished the top for my second QOV. Now, it hasn't been quilted yet, but I'll be requesting a longarmer from QOVF later today. I still need to get a backing fabric for it... something simple. The pattern is another free one from Quilt Index, called "Richly Deserved." I thought this was a perfect name for a quilt going to a wounded soldier. I had to increase the quilt size from the pattern to be big enough for QOV, but it was just a matter of adding another row & column of blocks. The outer border fabric is WW2 theme Army print with newspaper, medals, postcards and the like. I had this fabric first (another one from the Christmastime fabric shopping spree with my MIL) and then pulled the colors out for the other fabrics. I personally think the end result is very handsome, but then I'm a little biased.

"Hook 'Em Horns!"

A few months ago a very sweet friend did something for my family which was overly generous and totally unexpected. I won't go publicly into what he did for us, but suffice to say we could never hope to repay his gesture. He is an old college buddy of mine and like me totally bleeds orange. I made this little (the whole thing is less than a foot square) paper-pieced wall hanging for his office as a small token of our thanks. I had never paper pieced before, and I decided that I really like doing it--uses very little fabric & hard to mess up, even though I did in couple of places-- but even for my first time, I think it came out pretty OK. Hope he likes it, and if not I'll tell him to give it to his wife for a hot pot holder...LOL

"Winds of the Seasons"

This is my entry for our quilt guild's show challenge (only doing it since it can be entered as "non-judged"...LOL) The challenge is to take pre-printed squares/pictures of some type, cut them apart and make them your own. Back around Christmas, my MIL had taken me fabric shopping and these seasonal squares were one of the purchases we made. I took the changing seasons blocks, chose one color from each season and made little pinwheel blocks to separate them and carry over the feeling of the changing seasons, hence the quilt's name. As you can see it's not quite done yet. I can't decide if it needs another border--perhaps out of the blue coordinating fabric I used in the pieced sashing or maybe a pieced border using the different colors? Then I need to quilt it (likely by hand since my machine has been misbehaving and won't feed fabric right), and then bind it off in the blue. If anyone has border suggestions (or if you think it doesn't need one), please leave me a comment with your suggestion!