Bringing Up the Caboose on the Underground Railroad!

The last three of 16 blocks are finished!  Well.......almost finished.  The last one, The Story of the Underground Railroad, will need squaring and borders to bring it up to size, but I'll wait for that until I choose the sashing fabric.  

I thought I would have to buy more fabric, but I did some creative cutting and color rearrangements, and was able to finish the Drunkard's Path and North Star with what I had. 

North Star

Drunkard's Path

Before sewing the final center seam putting the two halves together, I traded the halves around, and discovered this different and interesting arrangement for the Drunkard' Path block: 

The last block is the Title block, or quilt label.  Eleanor Burns gave permission, and indeed gave instructions, in the book for the story to be printed as a label for the quilt.  It will be the last block, placed in the lower right corner of the quilt. 

I printed the story on the back side of one of the background fabrics in order for it to blend better with the other blocks.  That matched better than anything in my stash. 

While there are a few mistakes in these blocks, they are probably the most accurately sewn that I've done in a long time.  I determined to sew that exact 1/4" seam every time, to press correctly, and then to square up before adding another piece.  It truly works!  I had very minimal trimming to do as most of the blocks measured almost exactly 12.5".  I did straighten up that upper boat sail today too!  I'm pretty pleased with most of the blocks. 

I doubt I get to the quilt store before next week.  My car decided yesterday to act up, so I took it to the shop, but my mechanic couldn't make it do it again yesterday or today, nor could he find anything wrong.  Yet it boiled water and antifreeze out the lid to the water reservoir, not the radiator or AC!  All over my garage floor! Not a pretty sight!  I had to hose it out!  He told me to drive it around town this weekend and keep an eye on it, but he thinks it was just a freaky one-time thing, and he couldn't find anything to fix, so he didn't charge me a dime!  Nice guy!  I guess I'll give it a week or so before going out of town to the quilt store.  *Frown!*  Oh well, I need to clean house Saturday anyway, and mow the lawn, and then water everything!  The heat is going to be awful the next week!

I hope to hang my fancy "design wall" (*giggle*) tomorrow and put the blocks up in order, so we can all see whether they are going to work together or not!  Then I've got to decide on borders and backing in addition to sashings!

This has been an interesting last couple of weeks because while I've been working on this Civil War quilt, I've been watching the History Channel documentaries on the Civil War.  My, what a war that was!  I pray that never happens here again!

Happy Week-end to everyone!

---"Love"