Making: World Flags Quilt

I was lucky enough to have a very quiet day with only half my children here and nothing to disturb me. So I got some Serious Sewing done.

My seven year old's quilt made out of 33 different world flags came together quickly and I'm pleased with how the top looks. It will have to be quilted next week.

I made each flag approximately the size of an A4 piece of paper. I folded the paper into thirds or halves or whatever proportion I needed as I cut the patches for each different flag. 

If I was doing it again I would probably choose a completely different colour for the sashing. You can see where the red and the white sashing drown out the red or white parts of different flags. Navy would have been good - but a darker blue than the vivid shade that's used in the flags.

Someone asked on facebook how the flags were chosen. Let me tell you there was no politics involved whatsoever. It basically went like this:

Me: "OK, you can pick your favourite flags, but if they're too hard I can't do them."

Him: "What about Nepal?"

Me: "Sorry. Too much applique. Choose something with stripes."

Having said that, you can see there are some appliqued shapes. That Canadian flag nearly did my head in. The circles were pretty straight forward and I drew in the Indian motif with coloured pencil. In fact, we only have the Aussie flag in there because you could buy a panel of it at Spotlight. 

There was one flag that I personally wanted to include and that was Pakistan (as some readers know, I grew up there). I put it next to the Australian flag on purpose. Quite by chance it turns out that we've included the US flag (printed white stars on blue fabric made it possible) for my son's cousins who are half American, and the Nigerian flag for another second cousin who has a Nigerian father. The Scottish flag speaks to my family's forbears as well.

On the back will be some Aussie and Union Jack flag panels together with other random bits and pieces. Next job is to quilt it.