Carpenter's Square Quilt

I finally finished my Carpenter's square quilt. After John made our head and food board I decided I needed to make a quilt to compliment it. Mom told me years ago I needed to make him a Carpenter's Square quilt because of all the wood work he does. She had the corner block mostly drafted from a class she took with her quilt group. It is an old block from the 1890s, even though it looks very modern. I read somewhere that an old Carpenter's Square quilt was rejected from a book on old quilts because it looked too modern. They were often done as a two color quilt usually in red and white. This old quilt was my inspiration.

I decided I wanted to try a three color block using different blues, greens and white.  The two blocks on the right were my trial blocks to check color ( I decided to go with true greens and blues, not the popular limey green and a lighter blue, and figure out how to piece the block. Luckily mom had made some notes because while the block is similar to a Log Cabin quilt block the order I had to piece the 1 1/2 inch strips (1 inch finished) got tricky so as to give the block the illusion of interwoven strips, especially because I used two different colors for the strips. 

I had to redraft the four middle blocks so all the strips connected in a continuous grid. If you look closely there is one block turned the wrong way. 

After longer than it took John to make our bed I finished the blocks and sashing. I won't bother going into the details for the sashing. It just took a little planning and math to connect the strips and make sure the quilt would fit on the bed.  I was ready for the border. 

As I was designing the quilt I tried to figure out a way to get a little red in it. I thought about making one of the center squares red, but that broke up the symmetry of the quilt. I finally decided on a 19 inch border to give me the drape I needed for the side of the bed with 1 inch finished strips echoing the squares but adding a red strip in the middle, with mitered corners. I had never done a mitered corner before but "Google" and I figured it out. 

The quilt was too big (96x96) for me to quilt on my machine so I had Melissa from Sew Shabby Quilting in American Fork quilt it for me on her long arm machine. I had seen some quilt blogs where she did the quilting for published quilts. I wanted the quilt custom quilted which means the quilter uses the piecing to determine where she quilts and doesn't uses a computerized all over pattern. 

While the quilt was being quilted I made 2 Carpenter's Star pillows to complete the wood working analogy. I did quilt these myself. One with a cross hatch and the other with a radiating circle. They were fun and rewarding to make. I love the way the blue and green give the appearance of shadows in the star. Both the Carpenter's Square and Carpenter's Star blocks required exact piecing to get color, corners and points right. Mistakes could not be ignored they had to be unpicked set right. It was good for me have to do it right. Plus I was making it for John to compliment his craft man ship so I had to do it right. 

And I even remembered to label it before the binding was finished. A finished quilt.