One Monthly Goal: The Blue and the Gray

The progress on this quilt has been so slow that I've decided the only way to speed the progress is to choose it as my One Monthly Goal and push myself.  It has 30 blocks, 66 sashing &border rectangles, and 38 cornerstones.  As of today, I've quilted 12 blocks, 6 sashing rectangles, and 12 cornerstones.  And parts of several other blocks.

I can only quilt so long before my fingers wither so I'm giving myself the rather easy goal of quilting 15 sashing rectangles.  (At least I think it's an easy goal.  I've not noticed how long it takes to quilt just one.)

I knew I didn't want to quilt Baptist Fans on this quilt but I wasn't sure how to quilt it.  Because it's a Civil War-style quilt, I looked up quilting styles of that era and found that they often quilted diagonal rows across quilts, often 2 or 3 rows together.  So that's how I began with the 9-patches.  Except I decided to cross the diagonals in the center, then go in only one directions on the rest of the block.  And in my imagination, it would all work out that I could just continue smoothly from one block to the next.  But didn't take into account what would happen across those large sashing rectangles.  (They're 4" x 9".)  Trying to make the connection across them I realized that it wouldn't work out smoothly, removed the several rows of diagonal stitching in the sashings, and decided to quilt straight lines.  It's probably not the greatest solution but for this really simple quilt pattern I think it works.

You can't see any of the quilting in the photo below but this is a view of most of the quilt.  You can tell what's been quilting because there are no pins in those blocks.

So, my One Monthly Goal for August is to quilt 15 sashing rectangles.  I'm linking this post to One Monthly Goal August Link-up at Elm Street Quilts.  Thanks for hosting, Patty.  I can't tell you how helpful it is to my quilting progress and accountability when I publicly state a goal every month.  

--Nancy.