Cassandra's Circle: Fabrics & Sets

Cassandra in the center with a few women of her circle

Cassandra's Circle Block of the Month begins here on Wednesday January 29, 2020. Look for a free applique pattern on the last Wednesday of every month through January 2021---there are thirteen blocks.

We'll keep the same Facebook page. I'm changing the name to CivilWarApplique but it's the same URL. Post pictures of either 2019's Hospital Sketches or 2020's Cassandra's Circle. We have almost a thousand members.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2152934498369880/

Official Set

72" square without a border

The 13 blocks.
The large center block will be pattern #1 in January.
See a post about this set here:
https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/10/2020-boms-at-civil-war-quilts.html

97" Square with Border

And this year you'll get a pattern for an appliqued border finishing to 12-1/2". Border pattern in early January so you can start appliqueing flowers and leaves.

Fabrics

Janet Olmstead's traditional applique colors for Hospital Sketches

The patterns will finish to 18", the same size as the applique in last year's BOM Hospital Sketches. I imagine a few of you haven't gotten all 12 blocks finished yet so you could continue with the same colors and fabrics, combining blocks and sets from both years.

A couple of stitchers used a monochrome blue color scheme that worked great. Above: Karen Doerr Martin's block atop Angie's from Quilting on the Crescent.

Becky Brown is using William-Morris-inspired prints on a single textured background. Her palette of primary colors, red, yellow, green and blue, is pushed to sophisticated, muted shades.

 You can bet she chooses her prints with an eye to fussy cutting.

Pat Styring is also using a primary palette but intense shades and her backgrounds are black. She's thinking dots and words.

Backgrounds

Barb Rowland Roberts

Last year some of us appliqued to a scrappy four patch and you may want to continue that idea.

Lorraine Hoffman

Linda Pyke shaded the four patches---dark in the corners,

light in the center, a nice way to unify the design.

And then there's Matt Macomber's!

I cannot wait to see him finish this.

 If you are thinking pieced backgrounds here's an idea and a different set for Cassandra's Circle: Twelve 18" blocks in an alternate dark and light shaded set. The applique goes over the frame, sort of a layered look.

Light on dark, dark on light

54" x 72" without a border

I'm doing a small version with unpieced backgrounds, reducing the patterns by half to 9-inch finished blocks. My color scheme is taken from teens & twenties magazine illustration like this cover by Miriam Story Hurford.

Bright colors across the spectrum

Pastels and darker...

A lot of peach

With a checkerboard sash?