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

Oath of Allegiance

Civil War Diary Quilt
Block 2
Oath of Allegiance
5/20/17

My blocks will finish at 6″ once pieced into the quilt top.

There are faster ways to put this block together but since I’m only doing 1 block and not 50 of them, I cut each individual square at 1-3/4″ and then pieced them together.  First in pairs, then in squares, and so on until the block was done.

I’m still loving it!

See the first block and all the details on my project page at Civil War Diary Quilt.

~happy piecing!

~Melanie

If you follow me on Instagram (@thousandneedles) you saw all these pictures already.  But I wanted to go into full detail while I still have all the details…  I’ll prepare a project page for future reference at some point.

Fabrics used:

Kona White

Red/Salmon (Medium): Doodle Box Red, Cori Dantini by blend – The Adventurers

Turquoise Blue (Dark): The fabric line is not on the selvage.  Also, the front looks exactly like the back.  I hope when all is said and done, you won’t be able to tell.

Also, I am planning on using other fabrics as I go through each block but I’ll be starting with these three for now.  I am also planning on staying within the colorways.

I’ve had the book Civil War Diary Quilt by Rosemary Youngs since the rage a few years ago.  But didn’t make the quilt for one reason or another.  I decided one morning that I wanted to start.  I’d been thinking about modern quilts and traditional quilts and I grapple between the two.  I have not made a “modern” quilt as I’ve been trying to finish up some things over the last few years and the urge to stop what I was working on to work on other things was kept at bay.  Now, my sewjo has left me again and the old tactics I’ve used in the past to get it back are simply not working.  I think it’s time I start something new.  And how fun it would be to create this traditional quilt normally created with civil war reproduction fabrics in my current 2 favorite colorways.  Actually salmon/pink is my color and somehow this red took over.  I plan to put more salmon/pink in the quilt to reduce the red effect.  I love how the turquoise blue looks with the salmon.

The intro of the book provide instructions on how to do the blocks by hand with templates and foundation piecing.  It seemed overly complicated to me.  So I purchased the Civil War Diary add on from Rosemary Young for EQ7.  I have EQ7 but I’m not proficient in it and very rarely use it.  I bought it because I knew I would use it for this book, Dear Jane, and other quilts I want to make in the future.  Since this is the first real project I’m using EQ7 I’m struggling.  Any pointers would be much appreciated.  I was able to get the Civil War Diary blocks into EQ7.  The blocks are not in the same order as they are in the book and there isn’t a way to search for them.  If you know of a way to search, please let me now.  For now, I have to scroll through all 121 blocks and examine them closely to see if it resembled the first block.  Of course, the first block in the book was the last block in the program.  I’m rearranging them as I find them so that the first block is really first in my block library for this project.  To be fair, I haven’t taken any of the tutorials for the program.  I do plan on taking them one of these days to help me get my bearings.

I figured out how to print the block with “rotary cutter” instructions.  It’s kind of helpful in that it gives me the measurements of what to cut.  But it’s not completely intuitive.  For example, the first block finished looks like this:

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
5/14/17

There are 12 HSTs in this block.  EQ7 provided the measurement for the HST.  But I like to do my HSTs where you cut the squares, draw a diagonal line and with right sides together, sew a quarter inch on each side of that diagonal line, cut on the diagonal line and that will provide me with 2 HSTs.  The problem? I didn’t know how big to cut my squares so that the HST would finish at 1-3/4″ I basically cut them big (2.5″ squares) and trimmed the HSTs down to 1-3/4″.

In addition, there are 8 pieces that use the tri-recs ruler.  Again, the program gave measurements of cutting the fabric along with the degree of the angles.  That’s way too complicated but I guess if you didn’t have a tri-recs ruler, that would be the way to get these shapes.  I don’t know.  I’ve had the tri-recs ruler for so long I don’t remember ever making these without them.  Or how to do it without them.  I wonder if there is a way to tell EQ7 what rulers I have so that instead of giving me the measurements, they tell me where to cut the tri-recs at.  I cut them at 2″ and once the little pieces were put together, trimmed them down to 1-3/4″ again.

Block #1 – Alarming Conditions

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
5/14/17

I generally try not to work with directional fabrics and I didn’t realize I had purchased it in this case.  I normally don’t care or pay attention to them.  But this time around, I feel like paying attention to them. It takes longer and some fussy cutting but I am enjoying to process right now.

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
5/14/17

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
5/14/17

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
5/14/17

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
5/14/17

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
5/14/17

Civil War Diary Quilt
Alarming Conditions
Block 1
The back
5/14/17

As much as I love the finished block, I wanted to point out that back. A lot of times, people do not show the back of the blocks.  I really paid attention to my pressing as there would have been a lot of bulky seams where the points met.  In the places that were extremely bulky, I went to the back and spun the seams.  Is that what it is called?  I learned this from Bonnie Hunter’s mystery quilt-a-longs each year.  The block lays pretty flat and I’m happy to have the first one done!

~happy piecing!

~Melanie