Comfort Quilt for Quilts of Valour - Canada Society

As mentioned in this previous post, I quilted and bound a quilt for Quilts of Valour - Canada Society which was made from strip sets and backing donated by Mayflower Quilters' Guild members and sewn together into a top at a fun charity day of sewing at a local quilt shop.  This quilt will be given to an injured Canadian Forces Member in the Halifax Regional Municipality.  The quilt was shown at Show and Share at our Guild meeting last night so now I can show it here.

The quilt is scrappy, but I wanted to do some sort of Canadian themed free motion quilting on it.  After several pages of doodling, I finally came up with a design.  Since each rail fence block is made up of three strips and each is then joined to the next block turned 90 degrees, each side of the blocks are in effect marked in thirds. I used these "thirds" as guiding points for free motion quilting the design.  I figured out how to quilt a maple leaf on each rail fence block and how to end in order to keep going onto the next block and continue across the whole row without breaking thread.

I started in the upper left hand corner and sewed the outline of the leaf around the outside of the block until I was back at the same corner and then sewed a gently curving stem diagonally across the block and then I was ready to start a new maple leaf in the next block.  Here is an individual block showing the maple leaf quilting.

I was very pleased with how the quilting turned out!  Now I need to quilt another Quilt of Valour so I can use the design again!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday