Retirement Quilt

This week’s blog is all about a retirement quilt I gifted to a friend of ours. He finally retired from the Baltimore Police Department, and good for him! He has wanted me to make him a quilt for a little while now, and I decided that gifting him one for his retirement was the way to go.
I found a quilt kit called “Police Department” at Crafts Direct, and it came with the pattern. The kit includes all the fabric and a police officer panel for the quilt top. I love the color palette, traditional police colors, blue, black, gray, and yellow. In my opinion, the police officer panel is what makes this quilt stand out.
This particular quilt was relatively easy to put together. Simple cuts and piecing made it go quickly. There were a few pieces to applique, the stars and the word “police”. I learned one new technique called a flange. I initially thought it would not be easy, but it went surprisingly well. And it ended up looking fantastic! It is a great way to highlight something on a quilt.
With the quilt top done, it was time to come up with something for the backing. I decided to create the thin blue line. Doing this was super easy; I cut two large pieces of solid black fabric and a small strip of solid blue and pieced them together. However, it needed something more to personalize this quilt for the receiver. I opted to embroider the police department name, recipients rank, name, sequence, and badge numbers.
Time for the fun part, I dropped it off at my favorite quilt shop to have it long arm quilted with a police theme that the recipient chose. It contains badges, handcuffs, guns, radio, and whistles, oh my! A few months later, I picked it up, applied the binding, and appliqued the personalization on the blue stripe on the back. It came out amazing.
We hand-delivered this quilt a few weeks ago to the receiver; he loves it. I made him promise actually to use the quilt and not just hang it up. I prefer my quilts get used. I believe quilts are to be loved, not just displayed. I am sure he will get lots of love from this one!

**I blurred out the recipients name, sequence and badge numbers to ensure his privacy.**