When I originally came up with this block, it was to make a quilt pattern I wanted, which became the Captain Dick's Courtyard of the 1999 Mystery Quilt. While I'm sure there are other things that can be done with the block, I still think this one is best. As I mentioned in the Birthday Block instructions, the 1999 Summer Myssery Quilt instructions are still posted in The Quilt Shop, so you could readily make the Courtyard quilt by following them. However, since i had to make a quick sample top to check out colors and stuff for the Birthday Block, I photoed as i went and I am providing you with another set of instructions here. Hopefully, these will be easier to use, since the are not set up as a mystery...
Assembling these blocks into a quilt top is a bit different from the usual approach, since the blocks are designed to be staggered. You are going to end up with a need for partial blocks at the top and bottom. The best way to handle this if you are using exchange blocks is to make yourself a supply of block parts you just hold back to use in the final assembly. You'll need some horizontal pieces, loose, and some joined vertical pieces, loose. Having these pieces will let you even up the staggered columns of blocks without cutting any of the signed blocks you get in exchanges.
Obvously, I'm going to leave it up to you how large a quilt you want to make.... that's simply a matter of math and how many blocks you manage to acquire this summer. What you're going to do is simply sew the blocks together into columns, arrange the columns to creat the staggered brick effect we're looking for, even up the top and bottom, add borders and quilt.
Here we go...
Sew the blocks together into vertical columns. As advised earlier, press the seams into the light or solid pieces, so that you aren't ironing a seam over on itself, thus creating extra thickness. |
Once you have your columns together, pull them up or down to align the horizontal pieces into the staggered brick effect. Note that aligning the columns has left very irregular gaps at the top and bottom. Dealing with thee is our next step.
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Here is the top after the columns have been tugged into position. If you study this carefully, you will see that Column 2 needs a piece added to the top... 1/2 of a floral piece, cut horizontally. OR... Column 1 needs to have its top yellow horizontal piece seam-ripped and taken off. Either of these steps will leave those two columns even.
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Proceeding across in the previous picture, and assuming you chose to add to Column 2 rather than remove from Column 1, you can now see that you need dto remove the yellow horizontal piece from the top of Column 3. Column 4, which is the same as Column 1, is fine, but Column 5 is a repeat of Column 2 and needs a piece added to even up the top. You can carry this along for as many columns as you have. |
Here is a closer picture of the first three columns..
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And here is a picture of the evened out top. |
Guess what... you're going to have to treat the bottom the same way!
Once you have evened up the top and bottom by adding partial blocks, you can pin the columns together and join them, to produce your quilt top.
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Once you have an assembled top, the next step is to border it.
Instructions on attaching borders are in most quilt books and included in
several of the quilt instructions on the Treadle On site... in The Quilt Shop.
I'm not going to repeat them here, but just for the record, here again is
the picture of this particular project with the borders that i put on it.
It really shows how a good border design can bring a quilt to life.
Some Thoughts on Finished Quilt Size
In these assembly instructions, you have been working with a unit that includes the seams needed for assembly. In determining what size quilt you actually want to end up with, you need to work with the finished block size, which for this block is 4" x 6". By calculating based on 4" columns, you can figure how many columns you need to produce the width of quilt you want. By calculating based on 6" block height, you can calculate how many blocks you will want in each column to produce the length of quilt you want. This project was based on a 7 column width and a 6 block depth. This produced a finished center of 28" X 36". To this I added a triple border... 2" for the inside dark strip, 4" for the wider strip of leaves and ladybugs, and another 2" for the outer dark strip. This gave me a finsihhed size of 44" X 52". Now, as it happens, that outer border, which i would like to have end up actually showing 2" wide on the finished quilted quilt, isn't going to. It took almost every square inch of the green i had to do what you see. I made the strip 3". 1 1/2" of that will end up folded back under to the back of the quilt and then stitched down to make a self-quilt binding. Only a narrow strip of the outer green will be left showing on the front. If I had had the extra green fabric, I would have cut the outer border 4" wide, then done my binding fold so as to end up with 2" left on top.
Note those border dimensions. Generally, borders work most effectively if they complement elements of size from the quilt center. In this case, 2" is the finished strip size for both the horizontal and individual vertical elements. 4" is the finished size for the width of the togal block. For a much bigger quilt, you could use 4" narrow strips and a 6" wider strip. Hopefully, you get the idea. Border colors can either complement of contrast with the center... that's where your artistic judgement comes into play.
For anyone contemplating a "full size" (whatever that means) quilt, I generally figure a quilt width of 60" will cover the top of a queen mattress, while a depth of 60" will cover from the inside pillow edge to the bottom edge of the mattress. Hence, I make a lot of 5' square quilts. They serve beautifully as extra top blankets on cold nights, and, folded in half, make great sofa blankets for two sitting people of one napping person. This would, of course, include borders. If you want a large quilt, add 1' on either side for the hang down (or more... we hae a platform be. Your bed may be higher). Add the same for the bottom. At the top, figure out how high up the pillows you want to go and if you want a fold-under in front. You can do your own math.
Captain Dick