Northern Lily & Southern Rose Block of the Month

Northern Lily, Southern Rose

82" x 82"

For the 150th Anniversary of the beginning of America's Civil War I've worked with Moda to do an applique Block of the Month called Northern Lily/Southern Rose

If you went to Quilt Market in the fall you might have noticed the quilt behind the sales reps. We are coordinating it with the reproduction collection Civil War Reunion.

Susan Stiff hand-appliqued the actual quilt.

Here's a snapshot.

I love the idea of two florals representing the North and the South, an image that Lucy Larcom used in an 1854 poem and song called the Kansas Call.

Lucy's name was mispelled on the sheet music

 (there's an M, not an N on the end).

When the Kansas Troubles inspired partisans to move to the Kansas Territory as antislavery or proslavery advocates, Lucy won a contest with a poem to inspire western migration.

Sisters true, Join us too
Where the Kansas flows
Let the Northern Lily bloom
With the Southern Rose

The poem was later set to music.

We can recall her imagery to celebrate the Civil War Reunion after the war.

For this Block of the Month pattern (9 months) I chose nine appliqued blocks drawn from mid-19th-century quilts---a Union shield and eight appliquéd florals. The four roses and four lilies were each regional designs, favorites in New York or Tennessee, Pennsylvania or the Carolinas.

You can buy the pattern through your quilt shop. We are ready to ship it so ask if your shop is participating. If not have them contact their Moda rep.

I'm making one too and I will keep you posted throughout the rest of the year. I'll show you the first block in a few days. If you love to applique you'll enjoy working with these little known traditional blocks.