Marine Corp Quilt

I had a recent question about the Marine Corp quilt that I started a couple years ago. (Denise J, I could not contact you because you are a no-reply commenter so I hope you see this.)

 This quilt is still in its barely there phases.

It was supposed to be a graduation gift for my brother when he finished basic training for the Marine Corp. Unfortunately, there were complications and he was given a medical discharge before completing his training, something which was quite devastating to him. I did ask him once if he wanted me to finish the quilt and I received a non-committal reply, which I took to mean that he didn't want it but was worried about hurting my feelings and so I stuck the quilt in a box, attempted to remove all references to it from my blog, and it has sat there for more than two years completely untouched.

It uses a block called Crossroads which involves half square triangles and strip piecing.

To make an eight inch block, you will need eight strip-pieced units and eight half square triangle units.

Strip-pieced Units: Cut strips of navy blue and gold 1.5 inches wide and stitch together. Press. Cut the strip into 2.5 inch squares and these are your strip units.

Half square triangle units: Make units that are 2.5 inches in size using your favorite method. Here is a nifty website that has several methods and tables: Blossom Heart Quilts. I like to make my HST units a little bigger than needed and trim them to the correct size.

If you would like exact measurements, here are the rotary cutting instructions generated by EQ7. The document is in PDF format.

This picture kind of shows how the units go together to make the block.

So I hope that was helpful. If needed, I can put together a more thorough tutorial after the Labor Day Holiday.

Finally, I will probably never finish this quilt, so I am going to offer it up for free to anyone interested in completing it for an American military service member. I will cover shipping to anywhere in the continental US. There should be enough fabric included (although this is not guaranteed as I purchased the materials early in my quilting hobby) to make the center of the quilt shown above. I'm going to offer Denise J first crack at it, but if she doesn't want it, I'll do a random drawing from everyone who expresses an interest.

EDIT: Denise has happily agreed to finish this quilt. Denise, please contact me directly at kaelynscreativestudio@gmail.com with your mailing address and I will get it in the mail right after Labor Day.