A Soldier's Quilt

Woohoo......big accomplishment!!!!!! Another quilt is done!!!!!!!!!!!! I made this quilt for my Man to use while he is reenacting, and that posed some interesting but fun challenges.

The first challenge was figuring out what quilt patterns were around and popular at the time of the war. I also wanted it to be a somewhat simple pattern, and a pattern with some sort of meaning. So I decided on the Log Cabin quilt block, set in a Furrows pattern. Stephen reenacts as a Southern, so I thought log cabins and feilds of furrows would be appropiate, and something that would "remind him of home".

The next challenge was fabric. I wanted to do it all out of scraps ( and I had a LOT of them), but not everything in my stash was "period correct". So, I had to sort through all my fabric and choose the best ones.

The last challenge was in the pattern itself. The Furrows design is completely dependant upon having a difference between light and dark fabrics, and placing them in the correct positions. This was new to me, because up until then, I had always made quilts with very randomly placed color. So, I had to divide my fabric between light and dark (which is harder than you'd think) and then figure out where exactly all the fabric had to go. Trust me, this planning stage was probably the most challenging part of the whole quilt!

Next, I cut out all the strips:

Then divided up all the pieces and got them ready to become blocks:

Pretty quickly, blocks started appearing:

After all the blocks were completed and sewn together to form the top, then I embroidered a short poem on one of the blocks. It was common for the maker so quilts to do that, especially when the quilt was for someone special. The poem reads:

 I give this to my soldier
As off to war he goes
And when again I'll see him
The Lord alone knows

The furrows and log cabins
Remind him of his home
The red so that he'll ne'er forget
The girl he left back home

                      

Allison Gerwitz

1862

Then I made the backing, layered, and pinned the quilt in preparation for quilting it. While I was quilting, I had plenty of help from my puppy dog! You can see in the second picture that I quilted the light parts with a one-inch grid, and then tied the dark parts with black thread.

Finally, I made the binding, and sewed it on.

And now, it is finished!!!!!

I am so happy with the way it turned out, and I can't wait to see my Soldier use it at reenactments this year!!!!!!!