Sampler Sets in Traditional Fashion

Cookie's Creek's version of my Dixie Diary BOM

12 Blocks Set with Sashing

I've been designing block-of-the-month (and block-of-the-week) samplers for several years for my various blogs and books. I'm thinking about sets for next year' series on my Civil War Quilts blog so I've been collecting ideas. I've often used some basic sets.

20 Blocks set with sashing from my book Facts & Fabrications

Cass County (Missouri) Historical Society's

 version of my Butternut and Blue sampler.

But the stitchers who follow the samplers sometimes come

up with great sets.

Setting the blocks and sashing on point gives you a different look

(and a bigger quilt.)

Stitch & Knit's version of my 2012

Grandmother's Choice sampler of 36 blocks

She alternated half-square triangle blocks, which can give you

the look of  a strip set when sampler blocks and HST's are

set on point.

The alternate block

Lori Smith has used this set to great effect in her

Road to Freedom sampler pattern for 5" blocks.

Westering Women 

You get a diagonal set if the blocks are set on the square rather than on point.

This is a sampler I did for my guild several years ago.

Ruth in Dallas's prizewinning version of my 

Civil War Sampler

If you shade the alternate blocks correctly you 

get the illusion of a medallion quilt.

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-medallion-set.html

Back Home Again by Kaye England

Another good period look is a true strip set

in which the blocks are set on point with large

triangles. A striped print between them separates the strips.

Jo Morton and her Leesburg sampler.

Vintage quilt about 1870-1890

If you offset those block strips and forget the separating

strips you get the classic zig-zag set.

Here's a diagram of how the blocks are set in strips.

In this case the 12th block was cut in half

to finish out the edges. The photo is  was one

of those Pinterest orphans, floating around the

internet with no i.d. Maybe you know whose

clever design this is.

UPDATE:

Rae found it. It's 

Dawna's Cherry Fizz Sampler

on her Dawna's Folk Art Flickr page

If you'd rather think innovatively Jen Kingwell's 

Gypsy Wife sampler set is

nothing but new!