Mexican flag

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the theme of squares.  All I kept thinking was squares, squares, squares. With that in mind, I went to my scrap bin and started separating some colors.  Once I had a couple of piles of colors, I noticed I had three main colors … green, cream and red.  I really didn’t have a design yet.  During this time, here in Mexico we were celebrating Mexican Independence. So thinking of the theme of squares and the celebration of Mexican Independence, I began cutting different size squares in these 3 colors, which turns out are the colors of the Mexican flag.  With this in mind, I began sewing my green squares, then my red squares and as I was joining my cream squares I decided to add parts of a small Mexican flag I had.

The centre of our flag is an eagle devouring a snake, perched on a prickly pear cactus.  I decided that  this would be my focal point.  Once my top was sewn together I added a decorative stitch throughout most of the seams with a green variegated polyester thread.  As I was preparing my sandwich for quilting, I decided that I wanted to eagle square to be raised or trapuntoed, so I added several layers of batting to that one square.  Keeping in mind the theme of squares, I quilted it with free motion squares and used a transparent lime green polyester ribbon for binding.  Knowing that I love texture, I decided to keep it simple and just added a beaded cactus and a few beads on the eagle.

Close up view;