Week 15 Fort Sumter

Gee, it took 15 weeks before I suddenly had a "well, duh!" moment. That was because I noticed right at the end of Barbara's blog posting she has tags for the content and one of the tags for today reads "confederate block". Since I am using a blue and grey color scheme I try to be sure my blocks use the color that goes with the block; sometimes however I am not entirely clear on which I should be using. But today, when I finally noticed the tag, I had also noticed that on the flickr site several people had used the fabric that says "union" right there as the print design on the fabric. I'm not sure why.

I had already decided that my block should feature the grey fabrics but I did need to add just the one blue to represent the water around the fort as much as to recognize who it was firing on the fort. The suggestion to make those strips from the corner red did not sit well for my plan so I used the grey stripe. My fort sits surrounded by water.


I wondered how this block would look if turned on point as that is a potential for how I might set the blocks so here's a second look:


By the way, if you left click on the photos you can see them in more detail and for instance see the grey stripe fabric I speak of.

Are you following along with the flickr site? Some people are doing amazing things with their blocks like the quilter today who printed the photo of the Charleston ladies on the rooftops watching the assault on the Fort. Oh my goodness.

Week 14 Fox and Geese

I keep feeling envious of all the pretty blocks I see others making for their Civil War block of the week block. But I need to keep with my plan. Some of the blocks are such that one block alone is not all that exciting but if you had several sewn together they would make much more of an impact. Today's block is one that comes into this category I'm thinking.

So, for better or worse, here is my block for this week:


In another few weeks it will be a good idea to take a group shot of how all the blocks look together.

This week I was able to get my block sewn on Saturday, the day it was posted. I spent the afternoon sewing with my quilt friends - although there was more chatting than sewing done. Gayle had been to a two day class with Karen Stone last week so she had much to tell us. I was particularly interested as my long term project is a Pine Burr quilt that uses the templates from the KS book. Dustin, who is the host of the Flickr group for the BB block of the week project, is also making a Pine Burr quilt so it is fun to now and then look at his flickr pages and see the progress he is making. I am mightily relieved to see that he is making the same rapid (not!) progress as I am.

Spending time with quilting friends is a grand tonic. Even when we don't get much actually sewn.

This is weird. For my homework tonight I am going to need to try and figure out why my photo appears smaller this week than usual. Your thoughts will be welcome.

Week 13 Little Blue Basket

There were some issues with this block for me so it took a little longer to get it done and photographed. This is a pattern I have made several times through the years and I always have difficulty with it; most often in the cutting size of those two rectangles in the lower corners.

Here is my second effort:

I thought about taking my block "on location" out into the woods and posing it with a basket but a quick glance out the window shows there is a strong breeze and the thermometer says 34 degrees so no location photo for week 13.

This is the first time that I have not faithfully followed the block instructions. You'll see on the BB site that she did not have a handle on the basket but the block looks incomplete to me without it so I decided mine would have a handle. I put that on in the traditional way of cutting a bias strip, feeding it through my 3/8" Clover bias maker and then hand appliqueing it down on both sides.

My collection of grey fabrics continues to increase but I have discovered that my thread collection (for hand applique) is not keeping pace. There was not even one spool of grey in my favored Mettler 60 weight thread collection but a blue one did the job.

Surely there will be an applique block show up soon!

Week 12 Louisiana

This week I could not ignore that the block really should be made in the confederate grey. And I also tried to follow the directions as supplied which means, yes, I did make my flying geese out of three triangles. It is not quite perfect in the center and is maybe 1/16" small on one corner but that is fine for this project.


This being the first day of spring I decided to take the block on location out into my garden and see if I could find something blue to put it with. Alas, it is still early in the season but I did find a couple of small touches of blue to pose it with:


All along I have been trying to keep to the suggested color values and make the block as shown on the BB site. I'm not entirely sure that my use of the pale, medium and dark is totally successful but I was keeping with my plan to follow the directions.

I have a couple of friends who are currently in the midst of a personal challenge involving their art. Jill is the more ambitious and is painting a portrait of a new face every day for the first 100 days of the year. Cindy is making a new piece of quilt art (top only) every day for the month of March - at the end of the month she will decide which ones she thinks should be quilted and turned into a finished item. So with those two as an example I have been trying to discipline myself to get these civil war block of the week blocks done within the first day or two that they are posted. Of course when I am away from home it becomes a little more difficult to keep up but I am going to do my best.

Our Fourth Round Robin

In earlier posts I have been showing you my quilts that have resulted from an international group of friends who have been making round robin quilts together since 1997. We get together at the New Zealand Quilt Symposium, which happens every second year, to reveal the project we have been working on since the previous Symposium as well as to plan for the next one.

For today I am going to show you my quilt from our fourth round robin, The Cryptic Sizzler, which we began in 2003. This time our fearless leaders had planned a strip quilt. The owner needed to select one fabric and then make four 71/2" blocks. For the next few "rounds" we were directed to make a strip (or strips) that would be 36" wide (or was that 35"?) - the size of the blocks in the strip varied with each round and there was also some added cryptic comment that needed to be heeded in the making of the strips. The last robin had the challenge to put together all the strips and then add a border as necessary.

By now we had been working together for a number of years and thought we had worked out what each robin's favorite colors/styles were. I decided to up the challenge for my friends by choosing a fabric in a color-way that I had not frequently used, brown and black. And because my fabric had a distinct motif on it I also named my quilt upfront "Savannah Snapshot" to give the robins some direction in making the pieces for it.

Here is what I got back in January 2005 when we all met up in Auckland:

This is a photo of when it hung in the Asheville Quilt Guild show and, as you can see, it won a ribbon (second place in the group quilt category) so that was exciting.

Of particular note is the larger light central portion - that was a combination of three strips. The top portion was the hill scene, then came a pieced strip and finally the strip with the elephants. Another point of interest is that since the name of the quilt contained the word "snapshot" I made my original four blocks (the ones in each outer corner) to look as though they were photographs stuck in an album. Later another quilter made her strip to look like a strip of film negative.

Here you can see a close up of how the elephant area was quilted. Cheryl traced each of the elephants and then quilted the outline in the yellow on point squares above.

For the corner blocks I used patterns from Margaret Rolfe's wonderful book, A Quilter's Ark. And also note the care with which the robin fussy cut and pieced the feature fabric.

So that is the story of how we came to make The Cryptic Sizzler, our fourth round robin.

Week 11 London Square

Here we are at week 11 in the Barbara Brackman Civil War BOW. There are many interesting stories on her blog about lives and times during the war. A bonus is finding out all the different names that a traditional quilt block might have. The block for this week, for instance, is a variation of the Ocean Waves block. Often, it is the placement of the colors that changes what the block is called; the week 10 Lincoln's Platform is a good example of that notion.

But for this project purpose, the block of the week is London Square and here is my block:


For my lesson this week I have realized that when I am going to use a stripe/directional fabric I would do well to pay attention to the way the stripes go. While I did recut one of the small medium blue triangles so those all went in the same direction, the large one is going the other way. Shall I recut it? Maybe later. Will I pay better attention next time I use that fabric? Absolutely. But since my block did have good sharp points and the perfect size I am less inclined to fiddle with it.

Are you visiting the flickr page on the BB Civil War blog? I notice that for the block this week most everyone who is posting their block photo has laid out the colors/shades in the same way as suggested by Barbara Brackman. That is not always the case.

Block Making

Today we had our Friday Bee as we do every second and fourth Friday of the month. Generally we all work on our own projects but sometimes someone mentions a specific thing and many of us will work on that.

For today I decided to make a couple of blocks for the "Just One Star" challenge that Moda fabrics has issued. They are calling for 1800 pieced star blocks to be sent to them for assembly into 100 quilts using the "Flag of Valor" pattern designed by Minick and Simpson. You can get all the details by going here The finished quilts will be assembled and given to US soldiers injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

I decided to make a couple; one in each colorway. We had some discussion about the color choices noted on the Moda site as they ask for medium red or medium blue (just what makes a medium red we wondered). Once I remember to sign them, the blocks will be ready to send off.

Our guild , like many, also does Block of the Month. While I was away this past weekend at our Retreat I worked on the February and March blocks. The purple fan block was for February and I won the blocks back on Tuesday night - there were only six blocks made and I am embarrassed that everyone saw I was less than thrilled to win them. However, with our auction coming up my friend Gayle offered to turn those six blocks into at least a finished top and then it will be a donation for the auction. She worked on that at the Bee today after we chose suitable fabrics to sash and border the blocks with.


The March BOM is a Spinning Pinwheel. We were asked to make them in bright cheerful colors so that was a fun block to make on a grey day.


As I currently have two major long term projects underway it is good to be able to sit down and start and finish something in just an hour or so.