Dixie Diary Debut

Last year a block of the month project from Barbara Brackman that you'll recall I worked on was The Dixie Diary.  Although I had my quilt finished months ago I have been somewhat tardy in showing you that finish. So I'd like to remedy that here and now. Just remember that I'm a quilter first and a photographer second!

I accumulated a goodly amount of grey fabrics while making my BB Civil War quilt "The Blues and the Greys" in 2011 so, in trying to be a thrifty housewife, this Dixie Diary was also designed around using that grey fabric. This time I teamed it with pink because the Dixie Diary is, after all, the diary of a young lady.

The block patterns were given to make a 12" block but I decided to scale the patterns down and make 6" blocks. The setting, spacing the blocks apart and framing each one, would give the individual blocks a chance to shine. Above, the whole block shown is block 2, Checkered Allegiances.

Here I've highlighted block 11, Just Hominy, for you. I will hasten to let you know I quilt by check i.e. the quilting is done by a longarm quilter, Su Gardner of VA Quilting. We decided that as the blocks were somewhat simple we would also quilt them in that way. I had designed the setting to allow lots of open space for the quilting to feature and Su did achieve that I think.

The grey and pink fabrics I selected for my settings are from the Moda Basic Grey collection. Above is my version of  block 12, Turning Yankee.

Here I'm showing you the border and finishing treatment I used. The border was a wide swathe of the pink on white toile fabric I had used as my background in all the twelve blocks. The binding was done in a flanged style using the grey (as the flange) and pink from the setting.

The block patterns as provided were all intended to have a motif appliqued over the center of the block - either a 5 pointed star or a heart. At the six inch size, and having taken considerable effort to both fussy cut my fabrics and sew accurately, I was not feeling so inclined to do this applique. I compromised in an effort to stay true to the designer's intention - two corner blocks have a double heart applique and two have a pieced five pointed star.

You can revisit my experiences in making the Dixie Diary blocks by going back into the 2013 postings on this blog.

I have been waiting for weeks for the weather to co-operate so I could take my photos outside. Today at last was a sunny day but all at once the sun went down and I was in a mad scramble to take the photos. The block above, I can assure you, is perfectly square. The photographer, alas, did not have her camera accurately positioned.

This year I have been working on two "block of the month" projects about which I have been posting here: "Threads of Memory" a Civil War project by Barbara Brackman and "Where Poppies Grow" aka "Remembering Almo" by Denniele Bohannon and Janice Britz to acknowledge the 100 year anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. With only one block remaining in each project I will soon be hard at work setting those blocks in readiness for quilting.

Hopefully, you'll check back here often to see how they turn out. Surely I will be able to share the finished quilts with you in a little more timely fashion than has happened for The Dixie Diary.  But in the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed seeing my finished quilt, the newly renamed "Sarah's Troubles".