Next year this blog will feature a free Block of the Month pattern called Yankee Diary. Each month in 2017 you'll get a pieced or applique pattern for a Civil War reproduction sampler inspired by several patriotic quilts from the time.
I've been reading the diary of Caroline Cowles Richards who worked on many quilts in Canandaigua, New York, in the 1850s and '60s. She wrote about them in her diary, which also gives us insight into life for fortunate girls in the mid-19th century.
Civil War era tea party in Richmond, Virginia.
As Carrie Richards discusses the coming of the War in her town we'll be stitching stars and stripes and dogs and flags. You may recall we did a Dixie Diary quilt a few years ago, focusing on Sarah Morgan's Louisiana journal A Confederate Girl's Diary.
Moose Bay Muses version
of the Dixie Diary
Carrie and sister Anna
We'll go to upstate New York for our time travel in a Yankee Diary. Sarah and Carrie begin the War in parallel fashion, a little bit spoiled, a little bit self-absorbed. Both matured under very different circumstances.
A few of the inspiration blocks for Yankee Diary
You'll have to wait till next year---the last Wednesday of January,
which is January 25, 2017---to see the first block.
We'll discuss color schemes and fabrics before then.