Quilts for the injured soldiers or fallen soldier's families

This quilt is the Maple Heart quilt designed by a quilter near Toronto. It was designed especially, and only, for quilts for our injured or fallen soldier's families. The call went out to all the quilt guilds across Canada to either send completed quilts, or blocks, or quilt tops to one central location.  They would then have the quilts delivered to our soldiers who were injured on duty, or if the soldier died while serving, the quilt would go to the spouse or if not spouse, then the mother/parent of the soldier. Our quilt guild really took up the challenge and we sent several, all completely quilted. I think I made two completed ones - that's me showing one at the guild - and several blocks that were put with others to make more quilts. They were quilted by a couple of members that had long-armed quilting machines. 

These quilts were delivered by a Colonel who arranges for the fallen soldier to be returned to Canada and helps the families with all the necessary arrangements. His parents live in Chatham. A fellow quilter has a daughter who teaches in Kitchener/Waterloo area and she brings in a person to speak to her class every year and last year she asked the Colonel to do so. My friend mentioned to me that this man has such a stressful job dealing with death all the time, maybe somebody should do something for him. After a short discussion we decided it would be fitting to make a small wall-hanging for him to hang in his office similar to the Maple Heart quilt.  We first had to get permission from the designer and she requested a couple of colour changes just to make it different, but did give us permission.  We then formed a team of four quilters. Two of us went and picked out the fabric. I cut the fabric into 4 kits and delivered them to the other 3 and we each made one completed block. One person added the sashings and sewed the blocks together and added the borders. Another person quilted it and then we had a fifth person who really wanted in the group so we had her do the binding. I made the label for the back and attached it.  The quilter who's daughter is the teacher was happy to have her to bring his parents to school that day as well and he was presented with the wall-hanging. He actually mentioned to the students, during his speech, about all the support the soldiers received including the quilters who made quilts for them. He had no idea he was about to be honoured himself.

Here is his wall-hanging.

As you can see, we did change the colour of the heart in the middle and the sashings and borders a are different colour. We also bought a decorative rod for him to hang it on. We received a very nice letter from him afterwards so it made us fell good that he felt appreciated for what he does for our fallen soldiers. Let's hope we don't need any more. God willing.