Clay's Choice quilt block

Clay's Choice

April 2,1933-"Henry Clay's Efforts to Maintain Union Inspired Interesting Quilt" was the title of Nancy Cabot's column introducing the Clay's Choice quilt pattern in the Chicago Tribune.

She tells some history of the compromise bill that Henry Clay proposed in the 1800's and felt that this block represented his "move toward pacification."  This is a huge contrast to the Clay's Compromise block that is presented next week and represents the outcome of the compromise bill.

What I found most interesting was the following statement, "Keenly alive to the social distress of the 1800's, women of that day wove into their quilt patterns' stories of unrest."

 Henry's Star and Star of the West were other names for this block at the time.


This block can easily me made using squares and half square triangles.  There's a chart available here to make it in several different sizes.  There's even a link  to piecing instructions at the bottom of the page.


I used paper piecing instead of half square triangles to make my 6" finished block from these two units-

The paper pieced unit on the right is made the way Nancy Cabot showed it in her column.  Four of these two units sewn together makes the block like this-




Cut four 2" squares of background fabric and four 2" squares of fabric for the corners. Sew the squares into two patch blocks, make the four paper pieced sections, sew the parts together and you're done!  You can download the paper piecing pattern here.

EQ7 owners can find the Clay's Choice block in the block library under 01-Classic Pieced-Classics as Clay's Choice.  BlockBase owners can find it as #1128a or Clay's Choice.

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