Sey . . .what??

Have you ever heard of Seychelles?  Well, I sure hadn't until I got an inquiry from Sara about making a quilt of the Seychelles flag as a gift for her husband.- I "googled" Seychelles -  OMG - it just earned a place on my bucket list!   (click here to see why!)

 

"The Republic of Seychelles comprises 115 islands occupying a land area of 455 km² and an Exclusive Economic Zone of 1.4 km² in the western Indian Ocean. It represents an archipelago of legendary beauty that extends from between 4 and 10 degrees south of the equator and which lies between 480km and 1,600km from the east coast of Africa.  Of these 115 islands, 41 constitute the oldest mid-oceanic granite islands on earth while a further 74 form the low-lying coral atolls and reef islands of the Outer Islands."

So . . .I'm up for a challenge - and agreed to make a quilt of the Seychelles flag . . . starting with this photo 

and then this outline . . .

I found that the official Seychelles flag is 2 times wider than it is long . . . so I drew this out on graph paper - then . . . transferred that to 8 1/2" x 8 1/2" paper squares . . . and so a pattern was made.

Sara decided that the quilt should be about 85" x 60" - so after the flag size was determined, I surrounded it with three borders - black/off-white/black.

Now comes the easy part - the quilting!

Each colour in the flag was quilted with a different fill design.





The inner off-white border a ribbon design.   The outer black border was measured off in 3" invisible squares and quilted like a continuous curve design.

This is the back of the quilt - cool, eh??

My friend, Kim, has an embroidery machine - and was so generous to make this quilt complete by embroidering the word "Seychelles" in the colours of the flag.

What an absolutely unique gift that Sara will give her husband - this was really a "custom quilt" all around!

There you go - you learn something new every day!