2020 BOMs at Civil War Quilts

Jeanne Arnieri's beautiful blocks for Hospital Sketches

The 2019 Block of the Month

What will she think of next year?

We've been alternating pieced and appliqued quilts here for the Civil War Quilts Blocks of the Month, every other year. For 2020, however we are going to have two series, one pieced and one appliqued: Applique on the last Wednesday of the month;  pieced on the second Wednesday.

I usually focus my reading on a topic every year; last year I decided to read about South Carolina and the causes of the Civil War. Both series grew out of that reading.

The pieced BOM will be called Yankee Notions---Twelve traditional pieced blocks with monthly stories about two kinds of Yankee Notions:

• Tangible sewing notions manufactured in the North. 
• Philosophical and cultural notions dividing North and South.

The word notion has long meant an idea—-perhaps an idea that appears a little wild to the observer. Elite Southerners viewed New Englanders and New Yorkers with their foreign notions as threatening their aristocratic way of life. The two societies encountered each other in commercial business, for example city merchants or rural peddlers who sold small manufactured goods not made in the South before the Civil War. Somehow these small goods also became known as Yankee Notions.

The appliqued series will be Cassandra's Circle, thirteen appliqued blocks with stories about the women at the heart of Confederate power during the Civil War, viewed through Mary Boykin Chesnut's memories.

Mary Boykin Chesnut of South Carolina

See more about the applique series at this post a few weeks ago:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/09/applique-bom-next-year.html

Applique blocks will be 18" so you can use them with the 18" blocks from Hospital Sketches. That could be useful if you didn't have time to do all nine blocks this year. 

Yankee Notions starts Wednesday January 8; Cassandra's Circle January 29, 2020. More information about fabrics in a few weeks.

The patterns are free here every month but you'll be able to buy patterns in my Etsy store and we will have Facebook groups too. I'll keep you posted here.