Friday, March 14, 2014

Camouflage Broken Bar Quilt


I've had some military material sitting around in my workroom for a while now - I got it so that I could start to experiment with how much material I can squeeze from various uniform/clothing items. When I saw this quilt - Broken Bars by Rebecca Roach - sent to me through the Modern Quilting Guild - it screamed army stripes to me.



I set about taking apart one army short sleeved army dress shirt. I used EVERY possible piece of this shirt - apart from button holes & buttons. I used a bright yellow cotton for the yellow arrows/stripes.  I didn't have enough material for the last two rows of the original design - perhaps this is one reason I'm not in love with this piece. You can see here how I pieced all the scraps together to make more material.  You can also see the serial number of the shirt printed on the fabric at the bottom left.


The quilt measures approx 56" x 56". While I am not blown away by the look of the quilt - and I am not sure that I chose the right quilting designs for the materials & look of the quilt top. I am happy with the technical aspect of the quilting I did. Here is the back of the quilt. I used spiral feathers, leaves & pebbles. I like the way the back looks!!!










Back to the front and yes - we are now in the 2nd week of March and we still have a substantial amount of snow (well really ice now) in the garden.


For me this was great practice and I did learn a lot from both the piecing part & the quilting part of things. If you have any opinions on how I could have improved the result of this quilt I would love to hear your input.

I have been wondering how the quilt would look rotated .....

5 comments:

Sue said...

Wow, you're getting really good with the long arm. The quilting looks great to me.I like the front, too.

Kathleen said...

This is great! I've told my daughter to save her husband's old army clothing for just such a project some day. You said this is made with one shirt. How big is the quilt?

Unknown said...

Thanks Sue - you are always so sweet. Kathy - the quilt measures approx 56" x 56". The minty green stripes are made from one shirt. I will update the information on my post.

Anonymous said...

The quilting is to die for!!! I love your version!!!

Unknown said...

Thanks Rebecca & thank you for posting on your blog too. I love that you call it 'bad ass'!! x