Ladies's Legacy & a Nine Diamond

 

My latest repro fabric line for Moda is due in shops any day now.

It says March delivery up there on the left.

The fabrics in Ladies' Legacy are drawn from a quilt in my collection

made by the women art students at the Cooper Union school

in New York, probably close to the end of the Civil War.

See more about the quilt here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-cooper-union-quilt-samuel-w-bridgham.html

Becky Brown is using it for one of the models for our next applique BOM

Ladies' Aid New York Sampler (more about that next week) and with the leftovers she

pieced a Nine Diamond Quilt.

Here's her plan.

The Ladies Legacy prints are primary colors red, blue & green

plus browns and whites for neutrals but she thought the quilt needed some

yellow, so she found some in her stash.

She writes: 

"When I finished the applique blocks for LADIES' AID SAMPLER, I was still in love with the LADIES' LEGACY fabrics so I started sewing squares to make 9-patch blocks. I added corners and thought it was a pretty cool block and kept sewing while keeping an eye on my dwindling stack of fabrics.This one was going to be a bed quilt, so I started adding some other fabrics, mostly yellows and greens to extend the fabrics to assure that I'd have enough blocks. 64 blocks needed for a 72 x 72" quilt plus borders. I like square quilts because they work as a topper on about any size bed. The best thing about this quilt may be the border - just look what that beautiful frame does to elevate this simple quilt. 2-1/2 yards of border fabric was used to make this quilt - love that there are 4 repeats of two designs. The other four strips of the border fabric were narrower and used to prance around the LADIES' AID quilt. Oh my, such wonderful fabric!

THEN what a delight when I was reading your new book and learned that I had made Nine-Diamond blocks! Of course, and that's what I'm calling this quilt that I will gift to my sister, once I get it machine quilted."

The pattern she picked was first published in Hearth & Home

magazine about 1900 as Cross Roads to Jerico (sic) number 2385 in

my new Encyclopedia. When I was in Tennessee many years ago

I tried to call it that and the natives told me I was wrong. It

was a Nine Diamond.

And a Nine Diamond it is.

Her blocks are 9" square. She shaded them in counterchange

fashion, meaning that what is light in one block is dark in the next.

Mitering the paisley stripe in the border.

Her finished top is 82" square.

I'm glad she likes the fabric!

Simple pattern, great for beginners and a beautiful Civil-War era reproduction quilt. Thank you, Becky, once again.