Autumn Leaf - First Day of Autumn

In the Southern Hemisphere the 21st of March is the Autumn Equinox. In Australia we are looking forward to cooler weather and rain.

Autumn Leaf

The pattern Autumn Leaf is in Ruth Finley's book "Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women who Made Them."  The pattern is #2224 in BlockBase.

In the Northern Hemisphere the 21st of March is the Spring Equinox.  Which block? Why, Young Man's Fancy, of course.  Mine is fifteen inches square, each little section finishes at 3 inches.

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.  Alfred Tennyson

St. Joseph's Day - 19th March

On my first (and only) visit to Europe I stayed in Switzerland.   I was visiting in a Catholic canton and discovered that many public holidays are based on saint days.
The 19th of March is Seppitag - St. Joseph's Day.  It falls during the season of Lent so it's not the most exciting day.

Joseph's Coat

The block is Joseph's Coat BlockBase 2734.  The block probably refers to the Old Testament Joseph and his coat of many colours, but I used carpenter tools for the New Testament Joseph.

Single Irish Chain - St. Patrick's Day

17th March is St. Patrick's Day, the patron saint of Ireland.  Patrick lived in the 5th century and was a Roman citizen living in Britain.  March 17th is the anniversary of his death.  More from Wikipedia:

When he was about 16, he was captured from his home in Great Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After becoming a cleric, he returned to northern and western Ireland. In later life, he served as an ordained bishop, but little is known about the places where he worked. By the seventh century, he had already come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.

Single Irish Chain

It's not hard to choose a block for today - Single Irish Chain, BlockBase 2023. This block is set with alternate plain blocks.

Geometry Block for Pi Day

14 March is Pi Day.  Pi is the mathematical constant used to find, for example, the diameter of a circle.  Pi is 3.14 and many more decimal places, so month 3 and day 14 is Pi day.  It's also Albert Einstein's birthday.  

Geometry Block

This block is called Geometry and it's found in 120 Patterns for Traditional Patchwork Quilts by Maggie Malone.  It's not listed in Barbara Brackman's BlockBase or EQ7.  The book suggests it is a good block for a scrap quilt.  When making the block divide it along the diagonals and make four big triangular sections.  Mine is finished 8 inches square.

Grandma's Hopscotch

In France the first Sunday in March is Fête des grands-mères, Grandmothers' Day.  To celebrate I made this block, Grandma's Hopscotch.

Grandma's Hopscotch

I chose the fabrics during a bout of insomnia; Grandma's Hopscotch is a fair description of my brain when I can't sleep.  The pattern is from Maggie Malone's 120 Patterns for Traditional Patchwork Quilts.  According to Malone this pattern was in the Kansas City Star in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Hopscotch game in Boston, Massachusetts

Work in Progress

My blocks are coming along.  I am not making them strictly in order, it depends on my fabric stash.

 I have just purchased some red polka dots, now I need some blue and white checks.

Penny from New South Wales (Australia) has been sewing along, she may finish before I do <G>.  Penny has made each of the house blocks slightly differently, like the original  quilt.

Here are two more of the easy blocks.

18

The blocks are the same but the proportions are different.  The top one is a nine patch; the second one is based on a five by five grid.  They share the names Churn Dash and Double Monkey Wrench but there are dozens of other names.

 The 9 patch is Barbara Brackman's No.1646A; it has also been published as Broken Plate, Fisherman's Reel, Indian Hammer, Puss-in-the-Corner, Shoo Fly, Sherman's March, Lincoln's Platform, and Old Mill Design. 

The five by five is No. 1850; other names are Double Wrench, Aeroplane, Alaska Homestead, Bear Paw Design, Bride's Knot, Dragon's Head, Hens and Chickens, Hole in the Barn Door, Honey Dish, Maltese Cross, Pioneer Patch and T Quartet.

A Bevy of Baskets

Our patchwork group is working on basket blocks this year, one block a month.  The first is Basket of Fruit.

I starting a basket quilt in May last year.  It spent some time in a box on the shelf, as projects do, but it came out at the start of the year and it's progressing well.

I am working on a pieced sashing between the baskets.  The outer border is going to be flying geese.  I need about 120 flying geese blocks and I have 50 so far.

The Malaga quilt has a basket of flowers block.  It has been made with a yellow background instead of white and there are no duplicates in the floral prints.

Basket of flowers is a 5 x 5 block, so my 10 inch finished size was just right.  The pattern is 713 in BlockBase.

The signature on the block is Mrs. Rudberg.  Edna Rudberg was 50 in 1937, a farmer's wife with two children.  Her life was looking very ordinary until I found a new record.  At the age of 85 Edna married for a second time to a 91 year old widowed Russian immigrant Jewish bookbinder. Now that sounds like a story!