Quilt of Valor sampler & kits

I tried to get the Quilts of Valor things more organized yesterday.  One spare bedroom has become my QOV storage area, and it was out of control again.  Quilts ready to present, quilts ready to go to long arm quilting, quilts needing to be washed and labeled, and lots of block sets we've been collecting. It was time to dig in and organize the piles. 

That Quilt of Valor top that I kept pushing aside is finally a flimsy.  The horizonal rows for this one had been done for a couple of weeks, and just folded up on the end of my ironing board.  And that means there were other things piling up on top of them.  That ironing board is now cleared off except for the mug rugs needing quilting or binding, and hopefully those will be gone in the next couple days.  

This new flimsy is a sampler using some recent test blocks and several orphan blocks, with a grey sashing, and then a blue border.  It's slightly larger than most of our QOV at about 66 x 78.  But it has made a dent in the leftover QOV blocks laying in the box. There are still a few more blocks, that can wait their turn in a quilt.

I had 2 more "kits" in my sewing room for QOV ready to assemble, so I pulled out the kit for another of the Beads/Chandelier quilts.  This kit was actually pinned together into diagonal rows last spring at a sew day when no one else was able to come.  

Three diagonal rows sewn together on Sunday, and then - OOPS!  Time to get the seam ripper out because I turned that 3rd row upside down.  It was an easy fix, but frustrating none the less.  I may or may not get any more rows assembled before my hip surgery this week. 

There was also a gallon zip lock bag holding over 100 more of these Beads blocks collected from our group members over the past few months, so I sorted them into 2 more sets of 41.  The extras are "seed" for one more set.  

I cut setting triangles and corner triangles for the 2 Beads kits, and today I plan to cut some borders.  That will make 2 complete Bead kits ready for our QOV ladies to sew.  There is already a kit for another Floating Star quilt, and enough red, white, blue Rail Fence blocks for a kit as well. 

This was the first Beads Quilt of Valor, made in 2022.  Actually I made this one as a sample for our group to see before deciding to do this block pattern for an on-going block drive.  This one only used 1 red and 1 blue, and a common background.  These new ones will be scrappy but still very pretty.