Old Glory Star Pillow

What did I do with my rainy day 4th of July?  Made a pillow for the occasion.

While in Paducah, KY's National Quilt Museum last month, I bought a quilt calendar.

It's a calendar that can be used every year which isn't wasteful.

It has a different quilt block pattern for each day of the year, with a layout & piece sizes provided.  There are also some basic instructions in the back.
Well, the July 1 pattern really impressed me.

This will be my quilt block shot tomorrow, which means you'll get more piece directions tomorrow.
The pattern is called Old Glory Star and I haven't found another online like it.
To make a pillow I added a border.

I took 2 inch wide strips, placed at right angle, and sewed as you see above.

I folded the strip in half, and pinned raw edges.  When I came to the corner, I folded back the strip. Then I folded a 45° angle.  Put a pin in the corner, to make a perfect corner.

 After I pinned all around, I could tell where the edging needed to meet at the ends, and cut a mark 1/4 inch from where the end should be.  When I placed the ends of the strips at right angles, the slit mark was where I placed the corner and started my stitching.

After stitching the ends together & trimming, fold the remaining strip in half and make the mitered corner.

Stitch around the edge using 1/4 inch seam.

I chose colors to oppose the colors in the block after applying a white strip around the block.

This was a 12" square that turned into 16" square after adding the strips on the edge.
Cut two 16x11" rectangles.  Stitched a double fold 1/4" hem along one 16" edge on each pieces.
Lay this piece right sides together.  Then overlap the second piece.

Stitch around edge along the 1/4" stitch line already made when adding the edging.
Trim corners, turn right side out, insert pillow.
I used a pillow I already had.  The envelope pillow case is a great method for temporary seasonal pillows like this one.

When I was making this pillow today from the bandana fabric, I couldn't help but think of my 201st Follower that came on board yesterday.  She has a great blog over @ Still Woods Farmhouse where she said she loves bandanas and used one to decorate a cute little portable table.  Her beautiful farm house is really decked out for the 4th.  You should take a look at all her red, white and blue decor.  Glad I found out about this beautiful blog.

To look more closely at the block layout, please go HERE.

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Meanwhile, hope you had a dry or wet 4th of July, whichever you wanted.

As you can see, we are wet, and the rain is traveling only north and stretches down to southern AL.

So, tonight's fireworks look pretty soggy as well.

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Thanks to the FREE programs:

possibly used for this post

GIMP for cropping & other digital effects

 Photoscape for downsizing & watermarking photo

PicMonkey creating collages used on this page