Tsquared Quilts, Cooks and Calculates Life: A Quilt of Valor

Hey Readers,

This year Possum Town Quilters, decided to have Judy Stokes teach a block of the month quilt. Well with covid, most of it ended up being presented by email. So she was going to present 13 blocks so you could have an extra since this was being targeted to new quilters, if one came out badly, you would have an extra. Last fall at the MQA gathering Anne Kelly issued a challenge to make a block, a quilt top, or quilt a quilt for Quilts of Valor. I decided these two challenges could become one.

I decided to make some extra blocks to make the quilt a nice size for a veteran. Originally my plan was to give the quilt to Anne Kelley, the Quilts of Valor coordinator for Mississippi so she could give it to the next Navy veteran on the list. As I was getting close to finishing it I started thinking there is bound to be a Navy Veteran in the Winona area, that I live in, that I could give the quilt to. Then all of a sudden I remembered my sister-in-law Anne Turnage's uncle was a navy veteran. He is in his late 90's and was a Naval Academy graduate, as was my dad. I called Anne and she thought it was a great idea, so she called her cousins and got CDR Wilton Sanders, USN (ret) service dates to go to the QoV coordinator.

As I was close to finishing the blocks I needed to decide on a sashing. I really wanted a gold so it would be navy blue and gold, but it did not look as good as I hoped. So I sent some photos to my good friend Lauren as she has impeccable taste, and she suggested the red with navy cornerstones.

So red, white and blue it was. Next I needed to decide on a back. I had been doing this whole quilt from my stash, and I was going to do the back, pieced if necessary, from my stash too. I decided to do a split black to look like the sun setting on the horizon of the sea. Red on top and navy on the bottom. There is an old sailor's adage that says red at night sailors delight. I put a strip of white, with just an edge of the sun between them. I did a different quilting design on each block. I did some ruler work, still not great at that, but getting better, and some free motion work.

Jeff and Anne Turnage, my brother and sister-in-law, took me over to CDR Sander's home to present the quilt to him. He was so tickled and pleased with the gift.