Row Robin – Civil War Reproduction

Tags

Blocks, Civil War, Civil War Fabric, Civil War Reproduction, fabric, Fabric Stash, Quilt, Quilt Block, quilt block patterns, reproduction fabrics, Row Robin, Stash, Two Step, Windmill, Yankee Puzzle

For the last 7 months I’ve been taking part in a “Row Robin”. For those who are new, or don’t remember you can find a description over here.

This is one of the harder rows I have completed.  The theme was “Civil War Repro” which  means using civil war reproduction fabrics and quilt block patterns which date back to the Civil War.

I’ll be honest, I had a REALLY hard to in picking fabrics for this row!  most of the fabrics I found were just UGLY.  I know there are pretty ones out there, my local fabric store just didn’t have them.  I finally was able to find 4 fabrics that I didn’t hate.

Dark Lavender Strip with a Dark Cream Print

Medium/Dark Red print with a Mid-Tone Beige Print

 I couldn’t decide what I should do…I also found a navy blue flower print on a dark beige background that I liked and it also have a coordinating blue and beige stripe…but I just couldn’t find another fabric that I felt gave a good contrast or matched up.  Also couldn’t decide what blocks to try and make.  Do I just pick a single color combination and do 5 different blocks all in the same fabrics or should I do the same block 5 different color combinations?  I lucked out.  The lady who started this quilt top sent a bag of scraps from her own collection!  She had MUCH prettier fabric.  The down side was, all of my blocks were simple and made out of pretty large pieces of fabric, and there weren’t enough scraps of any one color to make a whole block.  But again I was blessed!  She sent a number of small pieces of this light beige floral print.

Light Beige Floral Print with a Light Sage Green Sprig Print

There were enough little pieces of it that I was able to pair it up with a pretty Sprig Calico print I had in my stash…to be honest I’m not sure if the green calico is officially a “Civil War Reproduction Fabric” but I’ve seen a lot of antique quilts and read a lot of books where the women were wearing dresses made of sprig calico and turned them into quilts.  But I liked it and it fixed my problem!

I used a “Yankee Puzzle” to turn all of those little scraps into little triangles.

Yankee Puzzle made of cream and green prints

Then I made simple Windmill and Two Steps out of my other fabrics to go around with it.

Plum Windmill

Red Two Steps

Plum Two Steps

 

Red Windmill (and my points matched up PERFECTLY!!!!)

I had a hard time deciding how to lay this out and make the color combos look right.  I’m still not sure it is right, but I had to get it finished and mailed out!  I never realize what OCD tendencies I have until it comes to my quilt lay outs…I REALLY need everything to be symmetrical!  Here is what I finally came up with:

Completed Civil War Reproduction Row

The owner of this top sent us sashing to put in between our blocks, and she will add sashing and possible more blocks to finish out her quilt top.  We each decided how we wanted our top done.  I decided not to do sashing, and when I get my finished top in the mail  all I will have to do is add a border if I want and quilt it up.

I have one final row to do before this Row Robin is complete, and it is made out of Batik fabrics.  I’m a little nervous I’ve never really worked with batiks and I know they can be bleed. I’m going to do a bunch of applique I think…Batiks tend to make me think of the ocean and the beach…I see a dolphin on at least one of the blocks!