Red, White and Blue blog hop

Oooh its my turn!  I have been following this blog hop since 1st July and have so enjoyed looking at all the talented entries so far.  I made my first block as soon as I signed up, the first thing springing into my head for red, white and blue was obviously the Union Flag:

Now I already had a pattern to make a Union Flag cushion so I thought it would be easy to scale it down to fit on a 12.5" block - well how wrong was I!  I have to confess that this was a right fiddle as it needed to be completely redesigned, although I feel it was worth it in the end!  I used just plain red, white and blue fabrics and finished off the quilt appliquing letters and numbers that have been cut out using a sizzix die.

By now on was on a roll and thought what else is typically English?  Well, tea of course:

Here I drew a cup template then replicated it three times in each of the colours (the red and blue are appliqued on and the white is just stitched).  I found the fancy font on the internet, printed it out and traced it onto the block and then stitched it using my machine (first time I have tried this!), by now my mojo was really on fire so I did a third:

I spotted the picture of a shield in a magazine so redrew it and appliqued it onto the block.  The England letters are from a word font and appliqued on.

I left it then at three blocks and went on my happy holidays feeling very pleased that I had accomplished my blocks before hand.  However last week when I started looking at all the blogs I noticed a lot of people have done pieced blocks from quilt block patterns which reminded me that I had one of those books somewhere..... (squirreled away and I have to confess it has never been used and I have had it longer than I have had my first child who is now 11.5!).  So I found it, dusted it down, had a look through and decided to have a go with some British fabrics I have lying around waiting for inspiration.

I chose to do the London Stairs block even though my fabrics were a bit busy.  Less than half an hour later the above block was completed!  I was amazed at how quick and simple this was to put together (it took me longer than half an hour to just design each of the above blocks let alone cut out the materials and sew them up!), so now I am on a roll:

This one is Patience Corner:

which took me 23 mins to make - including the cutting out! - so no patience required!

This one is Bird of Paradise:

a little bit wonky - couldn't seem to get perfect points on this one!

This one is called box:

This one is called Bright Hopes:

and this one is called Tea Leaf:

told you I was inspired didnt I!

And here they are all pieced together in either a wide table runner or lap quilt (not decided which yet!):

I used a black border to make all the blocks "pop" and then bound the quilt using a fabulous stripe that matches all the material.  Also I put another fabulous fabric on the back:

as I am not sure what else to make with it!  Hope you like my dining room table cover of London there too!  This whole quilt took me a bit of Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday (it's was non stop rain here in England at the weekend so I took advantage and got the sewing machine out!).

Thank you all so much for looking and please leave me a comment so I know you have passed by.  I would just like to say a great big thank you to Mdm Samm and Jane for hosting and organising this swap - I have had such fun and can't wait to take part in another one.

If you would like to join in the rest of today's blog hop here are the other blogs:

July 11th
Nancy R

North Hills Quilter

Sunshine Girl  (you are here)

Grammie Q
knitnoid

if you would like to view all of the blogs in the hop (over 100!) then go here.

Thanks for looking - Up to my eyes in blocks from Solihull