2024 Block of the Week – Block 8

Welcome to block 8 of my Block of the Week sew along! I hope you are having fun with me and learning some things. At the end, you’ll have some lovely blocks to make a sampler lap quilt or maybe use them in other ways. If you are just joining us, here is the link to last week’s blog for block 7, which will lead you to the previous blog posts and blocks. Or, you can just go to the blog page on my website and page through the posts. All the BOW posts are in order there. Now on to this week’s block and tip of the week!

Block of the Week

Block 8:

This block is called Crosswinds. Find the instructions for this block here: 2024 BOW Block 8.

A Bit of Block History

This is a variation of the traditional block, Swing in the Center, below:

See the similarities? I came up with the variation, Crosswinds, on my own with just a few changes. However I’ve seen the same variation in some antique quilts, but was unable to find out what they called the block or who created that variation. See? That’s what happened with the pioneer women out west in the 19th century. They “created” a block others may have also “created” and then gave it a unique name.

Ladies’ Art Company (LAC), established in 1889, became the first in the late 19th century to publish quilt patterns. The St. Louis company was the most prolific quilt pattern publisher. They were also one of the first mail order pattern companies. One of their most popular series of patterns were alphabet blocks. They stopped publishing patterns in the 1970s, although C &T Publishing has the Quilt Block Tool that includes many of their blocks.

The Swing in the Center block was first published in 1897 by LAC. Other names for this block are Mrs. Roosevelt’s Favorite (Clara Stone, 1906), Swinging in the Center, (Nancy Cabot, 1934) and Roman Pavement (Nancy Cabot, 1938). For my block, I simply changed the center unit square to a full square without the stitch & flip corners and then took the center unit of Swing in the Center and repeated those for the corner units.

Tip of the Week – Secondary Design

This is one of my favorite things in creating quilts. I like to create a block design that then creates a secondary design when the blocks are assembled into a quilt. One way you can create secondary design using just one type of block. I did this with my quilt Star Struck.

The corner stitch & flip sections of the star block creates a look of flying geese “flying” across the quilt top when the blocks are pieced together into a quilt.

You can also create secondary design by using two different blocks in a quilt. These blocks below are from my Strips & Stars quilt:

Now here’s the quilt that they are in. Notice how the blocks combine to make two directional designs.

The nine patch star blocks create a crisscross design and the log cabin blocks create a one-way diagonal stripe through three areas of the quilt. Your eye keeps moving around the quilt which is the purpose of a secondary design.

There are other ways to create secondary design, but I will save that for a future blog posting. You can also create a secondary design within this block, believe it or not. Here is the option (right) next to the original block.

By changing the fabric color on the four inner flying geese units, the “star” design now appears in the center of the block. Fun! 

Now make it scrappy, but keep the black center:

Really fun!

So that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoy making this block. This would be a fun block to duplicate and make a whole quilt. Leave a comment or ask a question in the comments below and be entered into the drawing for this fat quarter pack:

The drawing will be the week after this sew along ends. Good luck and see you next week for the last block!

Happy Quilting!
Deanne