Give me a "B". You may have seen some of the Obama quilts that were inspired by his first election and inauguration. A little internet search leads to lots of images and some good websites about political quilts in general. There's even a book about some of them! I was also surprised to find this blog post by Lazy Gal Tonya that I had forgotten about. The DVD series, Why Quilts Matter, has an episode on the history of political quilts. That whole series is wonderful, by the way. I convinced our guild to buy it for our guild library.
I decided to jump on the band wagon, even though a political quilt may seem out of character for me. I started my Obama way back in 2008, intending to have it done for the first inauguration, but something made me put it on hold and I just recently got it out again to finish.
Perhaps I put it off thinking that he might have a second term and I wanted to be sure it would all go into one quilt. I remember thinking originally that I would have more words in the border: Yes We Can and Change and so on. Those words didn't seem quite right this time around. A few weeks ago I had been making the stars to go around the border when I decided I needed some dates.
The central panel is a marvelous print alternating an excerpt of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech with an excerpt of the Declaration of Independence.
This quilt combines some machine quilting and some hand quilting. I plan to have it done by Monday. I will post a photo then!