Kentucky Cross Roads quilt block

January 29, 1933-Kentucky Cross Roads was the quilt pattern of the day for Nancy Cabot's Chicago Tribune column.  The rough clay roads of Kentucky were the inspiration for this block.  Her drawing shows a dainty floral fabric as the background and the "bumps in the crossroads stand out in striking relief in materials of plain but contrasting colors" she explains.

She talks about an antique quilt made in 1842 by it's owner's grandmother and describes as such, "The materials were hand woven, the thread for quilting spun by hand."  Can you imagine?  Boy do we have it easy these days with all our wonderful fabric, thread and gadgets.




I made this block 6" finished.  After a lot of trial and error, I decided this size is best done by paper piecing. You can download the pattern here.  The background pieces are cut from templates that are included with the pattern.  The following photo shows the basic parts of the block.

Block layout

The upper right corner shows how the 4 pieces in the lower left corner look when sewn together. All of the pieces in the center are sewn together before adding the 2 corners.

I really like this block and can't say that I've ever seen it anywhere but it can be found in Electric Quilt and BlockBase as #2914.







At the end of her article, Nancy shows all the blocks she featured for the week and reminds people that they can buy patterns for them for "5 cents in stamp or coin."  Here are my blocks for the week-

Cactus Basket

Album

Fruit Basket

Georgetown Circle

Old Gray Goose

Variable Star

Kentucky Cross Roads

If you have any blocks that you'd like to share, please send me a photo and I'll post them so we can all see them.  It's always good to see new ideas!