How to make an American Civil War mini quilt using English Paper Piecing: 3: ‘Lincoln’s Logs’

Now that I’ve finished the patchwork top of my American Civil war quilt, I can put together the layers, and do the quilting.

With big quilts, this stage can be difficult, as you need a lot of space to spread out the fabrics. My quilt is only 22 by 27 inches, so it’s not a problem! I did mine on the floor in my conservatory!

I put the backing fabric down first, wrong side up, then spread out the wadding (100% cotton heirloom wadding), then the ironed quilt top. Making sure there were no creases in the three layers, I put pins in every four inches or so over the top of the quilt to hold it all together. Then, with sewing cotton I made a grid of long tacking stitches over the whole of the quilt, with about three inches between rows, starting in the centre and working out to the edges.

As my quilt is small, I put the binding on at this point. If you make big quilts, you’d probably think I’m daft to do this, but I find that it works! The layers don’t shift much with a small quilt, so I can get away with it.

This is the back of the quilt – gorgeous fabric, isn’t it?

I put a few extra pins in to keep the layers together, and started quilting  – by hand, with polyester thread. I didn’t use a pattern for this one – I just echoed the edges of the pattern pieces.

When all the quilting was done, I washed the quilt, and hung it up to dry in the conservatory, so that it started to have that old-fashioned crinkly look.

This is the finished quilt – it measures 21 by 25 inches. It has ended up looking quite different from the way I thought it would. And very different from the example in Carol Hopkins’ book. But I like mine, with more red in it than the example that I started out wanting to copy.

This is the one in Carol Hopkins’ book:

As usual, I’m not totally happy with my stitching – I wish I could get my stitches smaller and more even, but it’s quite a bit better than my previous quilt, so I’m getting there slowly!

This shows the back and front of the quilt:

I use my little quilts as mats around the house, and as covers for side tables – anything that looks a bit bare, really! And as soon as I’ve finished one, I want to start another one….!

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How to make an American Civil War mini quilt using English Paper Piecing: 2: ‘Lincoln’s Logs’

This is how far I’ve got with the American Civil war mini quilt that I’m making using the English paper piecing method. I’ve sorted out the fabrics for each block now:

Once I’ve cut out the pattern pieces, based on the measured papers that I made before, I can arrange them on the reverse of the fabric from the charm pack pieces.

I use a tiny bit of glue from a special glue pen to hold the paper in place on the fabric while I cut it out. These glue pens are wonderful – they are from the Sue Daley range, made specially for patchwork. The glue is pink in the stick, but when it dries, it dries clear. So you can see where you’re putting it, but it doesn’t mark the fabric permanently pink. You can get refills easily, too. It helps to keep it in the fridge till you’re ready to use it, as if it is at room temperature, it’s a bit soft, and you end up using more than you need to.

As my quilt is only little, I cut all my pieces out with scissors. If I had hundreds to do, I’d use a rotary blade and a cutting mat. I make my seam allowances about a centimetre, rather than the recommended quarter of an inch, as it makes it easier to get accurate folds on the seams, as I’ve got more to get hold of.

I put a line of glue on the paper, then fold the fabric over and press it in place. The glue dries really fast. I just fold each side over (not mitreing corners or anything) going round the shape until all four are done.

This is one block, ready to be stitched together by hand.

Here’s the twelve blocks, once I’d stitched them all together. I use polyester thread, in a neutral tone, and just oversew the pieces together.

The sashing pieces (joining strips) are made in the same way – by glueing the fabric over long strips – except that I made these intentionally longer than they needed to be, to give me ‘wiggle room’ when stitching them to the other blocks.

This is the layout:

Each long strip is pinned in place,  and then oversewn to the main part, right sides together.

It’s tempting at this point to remove all the papers from the back, but it helps to have the main area still quite stiff with the papers in, while I’m adding the wide borders.

The long border pieces are added first, then the short ones. I didn’t mount these wide borders on paper first – I just turned a narrow seam allowance and pressed it in place, then oversewed the edge to the edge of the dark brown strip.

This is the bit I look forward to! Taking out the papers! Suddenly, the quilt goes from being lots of stiff little bits of fabric, to one soft and flexible quilt top, that has become something different in the process.

Unlike a quilt made by machine, the seam allowances aren’t pressed over to one side – they are left open like this. Later, the whole quilt top will be pressed before being layered with the wadding and backing.

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How to make an American Civil War mini quilt using English Paper Piecing: 1: ‘Lincoln’s Logs’

Apart from doing loads of embroidery all the time, I am starting to make little quilts. I don’t make large ones, as I don’t have the space, but I thought I’d do a few blog posts about how to make an American Civil War quilt using English paper piecing, as that’s the method I like to use. Even then, I adapt it to suit the way I like to make them!

This is the first book that I bought with quilt designs in that really ‘spoke’ to me – it’s by Carol Hopkins, who designs some lovely quilt patterns:

She uses the faded, small-scale prints in soft hues that I love. This is the quilt that I want to make:

It’s quite simple, and doesn’t have any triangles in it!! The first quilt I made had loads, and I kept getting the seam allowances wrong, and cutting off the tips of the triangles as I stitched the seams  😦  That’s when I decided that machine piecing maybe wasn’t for me, and English paper piecing might be more accurate.

I’ve chosen some gorgeous fabrics in shades of red, cream and brown,  from a range called Chateau Rouge by Moda Fabrics.

I bought a charm pack (a pack of about forty 5 x 5 inch squares, in many toning shades), and two separate yards of fabric – one for the wide border, and one for the backing.

Carol Hopkins’ book describes how to make her quilts in the traditional way, using a sewing machine. I take designs from books like hers, and adapt them for English paper piecing by working out the sizes of the block pieces, and drawing them out on dressmaker’s pattern paper, like this:

I’ve sorted the fabrics from the charm pack into toning pairs, so that each block will have very obvious differences between the L-shaped pieces, and the ‘background’ surrounding them.

The next job is to cut everything out!

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