Little Blue Basket

The block for week 13 of Barbara Brackman's Civil War Sampler is called Little Blue Basket.

I'm sure you can make it in any colour you want :-) But the story about 'Little Blue' on her blog is very interesting.

Unfortunately, the block - as shown by Brackman - is on a 5x5 grid (is based on a 25-patch, if you will) and that grid does not translate well into a 6 or an 8" block. It does translate quite well into a 5" and a 7.5" block, so that's what I give printing-directions for. And for the log-cabin strips you need to add all the way round to make the block into the correct size.

When I finally got around to actually sewing the block, I saw my way to make it a true 6" block ... and I added a handle too. There are printing-tables now, both for Brackman's and for my version of the block.

Rather than the 3" strip used in the original, this version uses a 4" strip, which is trimmed after joining it to the basket proper of the block.

Brackman's post, with piecing directions.
Printing-table 1. (for the 5" version that is visually like Brackman's)
Printing-table 2 (for the emended, 6" version shown in the pictures of this post.)


P.S. If you're doing the 8" blocks, you can make the smaller triangles (that 'should' finish at 1.6", with the 1.59" HST found in the Storm At Sea, 6.75" collection and in the Feathered Star 30" collection. OR you could use the 1.625" HST found in the (relatively) new HST 00A-collection.
You're on your own (or rather : with Brackman) on the rest of the bits then.