The Betsy Ross Quilt • Quilt Finish for America250

June 28, 2026June 27, 2026 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

It’s a big, fancy year for the United States, this 250th celebration of those men in white powdered wigs slaving through the heat of Philadelphia in 1776, trying to figure out how not to have a king, but something else. As Honest Abe Lincoln described it 87 years later, we wanted a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The three documents that were eventually crafted, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are known collectively as the Charters of Freedom. And so we celebrate this beginning.

We’ve done this celebrating before.

The first one I remember was in 1976, and it was the summer of the Bicentennial (200 years). This is about all I can recollect: a picnic with my toddler.

This year, the Semiquincentennial (250), that son will be celebrating the 4th with his family of five in another state, and hopefully they will remember more than a picnic.

When starting a government, or a marriage, or a school, or any great endeavor, there might be some failures. According to noted historian, Joseph J. Ellis, author of The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding, there were “two unquestionably horrific tragedies the founders oversaw: the failure to end slavery, and the failure to avoid Indian removal” (Kindle, p. 8). Ellis’ book discusses these contradictions, and we are still grappling with these today. Between 1500 and 1800, while “five times as many Africans as Europeans were carried to the New World” (ibid., 13), only a small portion of that diaspora was carried to North America, making us a predominantly white nation of interlopers on the Native Americans who lived here.

Those aren’t the only mistakes we’ve made.

Thomas Jefferson declared in The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This year, we celebrate that, but I do keep wondering: are we moving towards that beautiful idea, or away from it? And with all the examinations and navel-gazing, maybe we can acknowledge that we aren’t perfect as a nation, but that we generally are pretty amazing?

While I try to hold all these disparate thoughts in my tiny brain — for this 250th celebration, I made a quilt.

My childhood nickname was Betsy, so of course I loved this panel for the back.

This is Quilt #317 and many of the details are on the label. I actually had a different title, but this week decided I wanted to call it The Betsy Ross Quilt. So I made a new label and took off the first one:

(Photography location scout and quilt holder is my saintly husband.)

So this year it will be probably a more contemplative celebration, given the tensions in our national dialogue. I like people on both sides of that dialogue, but my overriding desire is to see how we can care for each other — the people — rather than just going for power or for ruling over the populace. There’s a reason why those Founding Fathers eschewed the idea of a king, and I kind of think they knew what they were doing. The dialogue — fraught as it may be — will continue.

Samuel Adams, 250 years ago this year, was on to something:

Freedom of Thought and the Right of Private Judgment in Matters of Conscience, direct their course to this Happy Country.

While I don’t have any great answers about how we make our way to that Happy Country, I just know I want us to keep trying. As a quilter, I honor that spirit of making mistakes, recognizing them and unpicking a few stitches in the process, so I’ve put out all my red, white and blue quilts around the house to jolly things up over here. To celebrate well.

I hope you do too.

Happy 250th Fourth of July!

Information on some of the Quilts

• The large quilt with EPP circles is I Hear America Singing. Most of the circles patterns are free here on the website.

• Tiny Star free download of pattern (and instructions) found here: https://opquilt.com/2018/07/03/happy-fourth-of-july-2018/

• The post about Betsy’s Creation, my version of the flag quilt, talks about America (of course), with a link to free download and instructions to make the quilt.

• Blog post about the star quilt (with flags in jars on top), has instructions and free download for that mini-quilt.

Monuments and Sights in Washington, D.C.

My husband once had a year-long sabbatical with the Department of State, and I got to know that beautiful city well. Here’s the George Washington Monument in November, when the late fall sunlight turns it golden, taken from the World War II Memorial.

This quote, on the side of the Supreme Court, gets at that delicate balance between just being right vs. recognizing that our liberty needs to be guarded by justice.

My favorite memorial of all was the Lincoln Memorial, especially when I could catch it at odd times, when all the tired tourists had gone home.

Below are some paintings on the ceiling of the Capitol Building (in addition to the Samuel Adams quote, above) that remind me how we stitched our country together:

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Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow

May 24, 2026May 23, 2026 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Eric Hodel, a scientist and writer of The Intrinsic Perspective substack letter, described a breakthrough by AI this week. It involves the above image, which was the answer proposed 80 years ago by mathematician Paul Erdös to the question “If you place a set of nodes down on a plane, how can you organize this set of nodes such that as many pairs of nodes as possible are an exact fixed distance apart?”

If you are a quilter, like I am, you looked at this and thought, Can I make a quilt out of this geometric design? for that’s what we are all about; that’s what caught my eye. Do I understand the above mathematical question? Not in the least, but here’s the new answer, courtesy of machine learning:

Nature magazine’s headline reads “AI cracks 80-year-old mathematics challenge — researchers are astonished.” The first drawing looks like that string art we made in grade school, where there are all these nails driven into a board in a grid. That was as far as we could see, as much as we knew to do at that early time, and we put our heads down and concentrated and wrapped our string around the nails.

Years go by, we get busy, advances in science and in life are made and we get older, we realize the wisdom in the old adage my mother used to say about keeping your eye on the sparrow: paying attention to what’s important. I could say something here about AI and its intrusion into our lives: some of it helpful, some of it not. However, I’d rather pay attention to the things I can make with my hands, keeping my eye on things I can discover myself, building relationships with the humans around me.

I made baby quilts for all of my grandchildren. This is Alex’s and I used one of my favorite block at the time: a nine-patch. This little boy turned 22 last week, I say with some shock.

That year I was teaching Creative Writing while finishing up my MFA. I sewed very little for two years. It felt like forever.

But it did end, here, with my parents and family in a jubilant day. They — and the grading and the teaching and the going to classes and the little first grandchild I held in my arms — are now gone or grown. Did I keep my eye on the sparrow? The answer is obvious on some levels: the university gave me my degree. But my eyes are not everywhere, nor can they be. And we move on, hopeful for forgiveness for what we miss, or cannot yet see.

And here I am now. I do not teach, whether it be in a classroom full of 20-somethings, or in a Guild workshop, which I also did for a while. I still collect interesting quotes (see the Steinbeck, below). I live a relatively quiet life, as our children are all grown, the grandchildren nearly so. How to keep my eye on these sparrows, now that they have flown away?

I do what I can, keeping in mind my mother’s advice, but also realizing she said it for herself. The small quilt is titled His Eye is On The Sparrow, and it comes from the song that continues, “and I know He watches me.” And so I depend on others. I let a lot more things go, I get a lot less done, but it is still a gratifying life: this making quilts and writing about it…and seeing the sparrows when they fly home for a visit.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for keeping your eye on this sparrow–

Postscript: As a thank-you, I gave my grad advisor a quilt I’d made in a Mystery Quilt Along before I started grad school. Besides Alex’s quilt, this is about all I sewed during that time.

We work in our darkness a great deal with little real knowledge of what we are doing. ~John Steinbeck

The quote on the blackboard (chalk! how quaint!): I wrote a quote on the board every day, and had them free-write for 5 minutes in their journals to loosen up their writing hands and minds.

Alex’ baby quilt was Quilt #55. My grad advisor’s quilt was Quilt #56. The sparrow is a free mini-quilt pattern, available in an earlier post on this blog.

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This and That • MarAprilMay 2026

May 16, 2026May 18, 2026 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

Let’s begin this overdue missive with the mundane: the stair rails in our house. This sticker belongs to Bryan, who I finally called in to finish the project after mucking around with it since March 6th.

I need a sticker that has the words “finisher” and “quilter” in it, although I haven’t yet figured out in which order the words would go.

This is when I called him. We’d had other recent attempts at this project of refinishing the stair rails, including a feeble attempt by Yours Truly, but in the end I called Bryan of Fine Wood Finishers to get the job done. It was needed as they probably hadn’t been refinished in the life of the house (about 50 years).

Do we exude this kind of confidence and fun? He spent some time trying to get it in his shorter van, and in the end needed a bit of a red flag. I’m your gal! I called as I zipped upstairs, ripped off a strip of red fabric and brought it back down to him. Now we just let him do his magic; I’ll keep you updated. (He does have a bigger van for delivery; no worries.)

Apparently all our businesses are in warehouses now. I took my husband to his physical therapy and was off by one block. We were at Jump and Shout Therapy, instead of Marketplace Therapy. While he was in there, I sewed squircles while I waited in the car…

…but first I took a walk around the complex where I took photos. (I’m always taking photos.)

That skeleton of metal reminded me of this sweet little chapel in the Blois Chateau in Blois, France, where even the ceilings were amazing. And this reminded me that I wanted to show you this:

Now that you know there are 640 of them, and that she made each one different, you’ll want to see some detail shots (click to enlarge any photo):

This is a quilt from the Pour l’Amour du Fils show in Nantes, France. I did include some more photos in the most recent post, but rather than overwhelm you, I’ll drop some more in here and there over the next while, like this one with 640 different little purses and dresses.

My sister Susan also did some traveling, but to London. She’s become an avid sewer, getting me interested again in garment sewing. She’s a fan of Merchant & Mills, so traveled out to Rye to see their enterprise and buy fabric. While there, they photographed her for their well-known inspiration called Social Club, and put her up on Instagram. Wow! (Doesn’t she look fabulous?)

I squircled while in doctor’s offices this month, too, keeping vigil while my husband was there. I’m really getting close to done, as I’m trying to keep up with Gladi, who has finished her squares.

Our church is dedicating a new temple not too far from our house, the Yorba Linda Temple, and we had a chance to go for their Open House to tour the building before it’s closed to the public. As always, I’m drawn to pattern and visual texture, so I loved the stained glass, done by Holdman Studios.

My photo at dusk, on the left. Another photo of this motif, from the Holdman Studios’ Instagram, is on the right (which also has more pictures). That would make a marvelous center to a quilt, right?

I tend to carry home smaller things from my travels, like stickers and an elegant candy box. Sadly, I ate the last one of the little sweet bits inside while writing this post.

But water bottles are also a prime souvenir for me, as they remind me of my experiences. Oh, and tote bags for my grocery shopping (our state has a no plastic bag rule), but I won’t show you my collection at this time.

One last quilt from Nantes: a granny square-inspired quilt, with “granny lanterns.”

Granny Square Updates

Oh Granny Original Post

Oh Granny Update Post

Besides the one you saw a couple of weeks ago, here are four more. I need to make eight total for May’s allotment, so have a few to go. Others who are playing along have posted theirs, too, on Instagram:

Since hashtags are dead in Instagram, if you want to join the gang, either leave a comment on this post, or on This Instagram Post, and I’ll add your account to the list I’m keeping on that post. If you have a a photo and don’t use Instagram, I’m happy to post it up here, or link to your blog. I’m also on BlueSky for those who have left Meta behind, although I don’t know if you need to join to see my blocks on there.

I’ve also reworked some earlier handouts and patterns. This is a digital image of four pinwheel blocks, but I really only made one. The original post shows it in red and white; here’s the free download, if you want it:

Pinwheel Quilt_OPQuilt Download

I also had a request for a really oldie-but-goodie quilt (original post)(original post in green), so I drew up a pay-what-you-want-but-free-is-okay download for that. It’s in my pattern shop.

One last photo of France’s rapeseed fields and I’m off:

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Oh Granny 2026 • Quick Update

May 1, 2026May 16, 2026 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Oh, my! We are already seeing blocks on your design walls, in your IG feeds and on your sewing tables. We’re happy to have company for making Oh! Granny squares. This post is just a quick update, before I start writing/posting about my trip to Nantes and the quilt show there.

Carol and I were finally able to touch base about the timing. The following schedule is just a suggestion…if you need to slow it down, or if you are on a hot take and Want This Thing Done, please make at your speed.

Can you manage two a week?

I timed it out and either the 3-squares block OR the 4-squares block (see previous post for info and/or scroll down for free download) take me about 30 minutes. Of course, choosing your fabrics will take you some time, but as many of us are taking from the scraps from our already beautiful coordinated stashes (haha), so probably not as long as you think.

I’m using all the same white for my backgrounds so I can precut the rectangles, as I’m going to follow on the track of the image above: 5 blocks, six rows, 1″ sashing with corner stones at the intersections and a simple binding. Some of my illustration blocks are repeated. Some I went with the “criss-cross” effect and some I didn’t.

If we do about two a week, that’s 8 per month, which will take us about four months to build a quilt the size above.

Or, you could do it this way:

Whatever works for you. Then, by fall, you could have it draped over the back of your sofa, or wherever you put your newest quilts.

So I have two free downloads for you. The first one (below) is the complete package: how-to’s, pattern directions, etc. AND the schedule. I also put the illustration shown at the top of this post on the last page.

Granny Squares PatternLite_C Download

The second one (below) is JUST THE SCHEDULE, complete with little boxes you can check off as you go. Or scribble out. Or put stickers on, whatever floats your boat. Admittedly, I only did it for 30 blocks, but if you decide on a bigger quilt, write them on.

Granny Squares Pattern_Schedule Download

If you click on the title, you can see the download. If you click on the Download…(well, you can guess).

Please refer to the previous post for more information.