Civil War Diary Quilt: Block 3

Conscript Law

Civil War Diary Quilt
Block 3
Conscript Law
5/29/17

See details of this quilt on my project page: Civil War Diary Quilt.

 

I needed 12 HSTs. I couldn’t figure out how much to cut the squares to get a finished 1.5 HST.  I couldn’t figure out how to get EQ7 to tell me how to do this.  If you know, please let me know.  To be fair, the program comes with tutorials and things and I’ve only watched the first video.  I plan to spend time each week learning the program but I’m not there yet so… it’s the user, not the program.  Anyway, this site calculates it for you.  All you need is to enter the finished size of the HST and it will tell you how big to cut the squares.  Since I needed 12 HST I chose to use the 4 HST method. 🙂

The blocks in this quilt will finish at 6″.  I cut my squares to 4″.  To be exact, it would have been cut at 3-3/8″ but I cut it larger to trim down.  I trimmed the HSTs to 2″.

Then I needed to make this little block:

That baby is probably about a 3″ square.  I trimmed it down to a 2″ square. I do not know the name of the unit.  There probably is a name for it.

To get 4 of these I needed to cut:

  • 2-4″ squares of the red and the white
  • 1 – 4″ square of the turquoise, then cut on the diagonal twice for 4 triangles

For the red and white squares, I put the right sides together and drew a line on the diagonal. sewed a quarter inch from each side of the line; cut on the line and then cut on the diagonal. you’ll get a total of 8 half triangles. put aside the ones with the white fabric on the left and keep the ones with the red fabric on the left.

Then I center the turquoise triangles onto the red/white triangles and sewed on the long edge.  I press fabric into the turquoise but I assume you can press in the method you like.

Then I trim to 2″ squares. And put all the little pieces together to make the final block.

Civil War Diary Quilt
Block 3
Conscript Law
5/29/17

 

And here’s my back so you can see what that looks like:

Personally, and I don’t mean to brag, but I am so amazed at how far I’ve come in my quilting journey.  I’ve been quilting for about 10 years now and I’m loving how my points are matching and how flat this block is.  I’m happy that I took the time to learn the steps and practice and learn things over again.  Practice makes perfect.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but I love how my journey is progressing. 🙂

~happy piecing!

~Melanie

5 responses »

  1. It’s a great looking block and very precise. The hsts aren’t so bad when you know the magic formula. Technically, it’s finished size plus 7/8″. I always add an inch and trim them, because then they are absolutely perfectly straight. If you do that, keep the ruler diagonal straight on the middle seam, trim half the extra from two sides, flip it and trim the rest to make it the perfect size. So for 1.5″ finished, for example, I would cut 2.5″ and stitch and trim to 1.5″. Or you can cut to 2-3/8″ and not trim.

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