Civil War Jubilee Free Pattern

Find the free pattern from Moda here:

The quilt design above was a collaboration between me, the fabric designer, and Susan Stiff, a Moda graphic artist. When designing Civil War Jubilee, the collection of reproduction prints commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, I thought of a patchwork chain for the free pattern.

We had this image depicting the New Year's Eve Watch Meeting,

waiting for January 1, 1863 when the Proclamation

went into effect.

I went through my BlockBase program looking for chains and found 92 patterns with the word chain in the name. This is drawn from a vintage quilt, published by Betty Hagerman in her Telegraphics quilt column in 1980 as Chain. It had possibilities and looked like the rectangular links in the old Watch Meeting picture.

We simplified it, colored it counterchange fashion---alternating two shadings. 

What's light in Block A is dark in Block B.

Susan kept my two-block shading idea but changed the color arrangement to something with less symmetry by adding some light solids among the dark reproduction prints. They pop out at irregular intervals.

She also added an inner border, here on the right,

so the block design carried out into the border and you don't get those

floating triangles as in my sketch.

We give you the fabric requirements as yardage, but since the pre-cuts come out first

you might want to think strips and squares.

And Lisa at Vintage Modern Quilts has a Learn to Quilt thread going.

She shows you how to cut the pattern efficiently using yardage---

yardage of a different era.

I'm so glad that people who can add are working with my fabrics. Mathematics was never my skill area.