Red and White sampler quilt

Back in 2015, I started following Tales of Cloth on instagram.  She is one of my favorite people to follow.  I love her English Paper piecing patterns and the things that she is constantly working on.  I had wanted to do a quilt along for a long time.  I had also wanted to do a sampler quilt for a long time to have the experience of making lots of different types of blocks.  When I saw her post on her Red night Sky quilt, I knew it was the one that I wanted to do.  My aunt had asked for a Red and White quilt for Christmas that year, it was all perfect timing.

My favorite part of following each block was reading the history of each block..its origins.  The lady on Tales of Cloth said that she got a history degree and she really enjoyed the history part of finding each block she added to her quilt and doing a tutorial on those blocks.

I made two of each of the blocks for a grand total of 98 blocks.  It was a long long process over the course of 3 months.  However, it was totally worth the work.  I followed each tutorial and made each quilt block.  The last 6 blocks, I did hurry through to finish.  But that was so that she could get it for Christmas.  The following pictures were the only ones that I took sadly, but they definitely give the scope of the project.  I end up making one queen sized quilt for my aunt, one twin size for me and then I took the left over blocks and made them into some pillow covers.  I purchased all the fabric from Connecting Threads and washed it with a color catcher just in case before sewing.

My daughter keeping me entertained while I sew and reading a book out loud.  

I am terrible at math.  Instead of trying to figure out how long and wide to make it, I just laid out a queen bed spread and made the block match.  This picture was taken just 3 hours before a my sister in law was in a horrible car crash.  I thought I would have all night to finish the quilt and instead spent the night rushing to the E.R. to wait hours to pick her, her step son, son and ex-husband up at the hospital.  Thankfully they survived a crash where they didn't see traffic stopping over a hill and rear ended someone at 65 MPH.  Seat belts save lives people!!  They walked away with no broken bones.  It was a miracle.  

The top all finished.  I don't have an actual finished picture.  I know, I know.  I am a terrible quilter only taking in the middle process pics, but I just did a stitch in the ditch to finish it off so it didn't look different than this.  I used the red as a binding.  

Christmas 2016, the year following the quilt build, I made these pillow covers.  I absolutely love how they turned out.  

Hope you enjoyed.