Quilts of Valor updates

 Yesterday was a good day to work on some Quilts of Valor tasks.  We were supposed to award a quilt on Wednesday evening to a veteran, but he didn't show up.  I was afraid of that happening because it took me months to get it scheduled, and he was not very enthusiastic.  It was disappointing, but we'll try to reschedule it.

Last week we awarded Quilts of Valor to a married couple, both of whom are veterans.  Family members out of state had already made the quilts as well as pillowcases for each of their 4 children.  I was contacted to make the award, and once it was scheduled the quilts were mailed to me.  As always it was an honor.  And I have these updated online in the QOV database.

Our group has 6 quilt awards currently assigned to us the state coordinator, and we have only1 quilt ready to go except for a label.  Six more have been quilted, and binding was already prepped for 5 of those.  I cut binding for the last quilt, and attached binding to 1 of them, that I'm hand stitching now.  I'll take these to guild on Saturday morning to see if any other QOV members want to bind them.  We do have 23 quilt tops waiting to be quilted, have backings for some, and a couple of block sets ready to assemble into a top.  So we're in good shape going forward.  

While I was cutting binding for the one QOV, I also cut parts and pieces for a few more blocks since I had the QOV scrap bin handy.  And of course I had to sew one.  Facets was a test block for me, using a pattern shared by the Rainbow Scrap Challenge coordinator Angela.  It's a really good looking block, and might be one I share with our QOV group in the future. 

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/2024/08/hen-chicks-august-block-4-facets.html 

I cut pieces for 4 churn dash blocks using scraps from the bin, plus more of the blue I used for that binding.  

And I cut the parts for another Split Back Star block.  The red came from the scrap bin, and the rest came from some yardage I bought on the recent shop hop. 

While I have Quilts of Valor on my mind, I want to show you a little bit of the beautiful Veteran's Park we have here.  It was the location we had planned for the award we'll be rescheduling.  I took a lot of photos while waiting . . .

This small park to honor our veterans is located downtown, right on Main St.  It was built and is maintained by multiple organizations in the community.

The flowers and landscaping are maintained by the local garden club.  Every light post has a plaque to identify who donated it. 

A large granite wall honors local service members who were killed in action.  Behind that you can see a low wall and wrought iron fence.  Families could donate money to honor any local veteran and those names are engraved on the low wall below the fence.

Various families and groups donated beautiful granite benches, and a drinking fountain for the comfort of visitors to the park.  Each bench has a different group or person recognized, like this one that honors women veterans of several eras.

On the hour the fountain springs to life for about 5 minutes.  The water comes from the points of the gold star.  I do know that there have been occasional events held here.  An example - a promotion pinning was done here for a young Army officer a couple of years ago.