What Happens When Civil War Bride Quilts Go Bad....

I meant to follow the pattern.  I swear I did.  After all, I paid $40 for it and had it shipped from Australia.  I read the blog dedicated solely to those making the quilt and watched with lust in my heart as they completed block after block and then finally the border and the whole quilt.  I loved the story behind the quilt, the speculation, the mystery, and I loved the way the quilt itself looked.  Even though I didn't much care for all that hand appliqueing, I thought I might like it if each block was something different.  I like scrap quilts with all their variety and energy.

When I received my pattern,  I didn't start work on it right away, but waited until I felt the mood to tackle such an ambitious undertaking.  I thought about it carefully and one day decided I would make it for my 12 year old daughter's wedding quilt in case I am not around.  That was my motivation.

So I set to work on the peacock block because that one seemed interesting.  Then I went on to make the two birds with the eggs in the nest.  I still have embroidery to do for beaks and top knots but suddenly I thought, "I like this, but what if, for my daughter, I use an animal or two that she comes across here in SC so it will have more meaning for her."  It was just a flittering by thought as I hand appliqued but I couldn't shake it.  It was probably closely connected to the fact I can never follow a pattern to the end, I always have to change it to something I makeup or I get bored.  I also can't do it the "normal" or "right" way most of the time either.  For example, I closely read how to applique the shapes using matching thread and tiny, invisible stitches, and watched youtube videos of hand appliqueing demonstrations, but I found that I liked to use a contrasting thread and make really tiny, close together, visible stiches.  It seems to me that adds energy to the image, simliar to gestural drawing with the energetic markings all over the place.

So then all hell broke loose.  First I made a squirrels block with oak leaves and acorns, then the fawn, then the turtles.  So now of course I feel like we need blocks for Carolina anoles that live in our backyard, toads, pine voles, mice (with whom we wage an ongoing battle), snakes, opossums, raccoons, fish, dogs, cats, scuppernong grapevines, wisteria, Carolina jasmine, Magnolias, and all manner of other Southern things.  The original Civil War Bride Quilt is fading to a distant memory.

 I'm currently working on the guinea fowl block

After I finished the squirrels, I made a fawn block that I still need to modify because this is an improvisational method of working.  I'm putting flowers around the bottom area and have taken some time off to decide on the best approach.  And I have noticed that the front leg is about twice as long as the back leg.  At first that concerned me.  I wondered how he was going to walk like that.  Then I realized he only had two legs, so he wasn't going to be standing up and wondering off anyway.

The original has lots of leafy-ness filling up the blocks and I want to continue that, but it is tricky figuring out what goes where.  The original quilter made it look kind of random, but I now see it was very, very carefully thought out and designed.  I didn't appreciate it until I tried to do it!  These are the turtles--we've spent a lot of time moving turtles off the road this spring and summer.  I have since added lots of lily pad leaves to the empty spots.

 

In keeping with our Civil War theme, we took a trip to Florence, SC to see if we could find the cemetery where the Union soldiers were buried.