Compass quilt block

The Compass

June 27, 1933-Nancy Cabot wrote, "The designer of "The Compass" was a crippled veteran of the civil war, who whiled away the long tedious hours of his days making a quilt of this pattern for each of his fourteen grandchildren.  The quilt is a combination of piece work and applique."

I was able to find three old patterns for the Compass quilt here, here and here. You need to go to image 14 on the last link to see the Compass pattern.

All three patterns suggest using pink, green and white fabric when making this pattern.

The Compass block can be found in Electric Quilt's Blockbase  program as #3847.

I made this block but it was very difficult and took many, many hours.  Definitely not my best work. I started out using English paper piecing.  That wasn't a good choice because of the circles.  I ended up hand sewing the center to the two rings and appliqueing the block to the background.  I think the biggest problem was the 6" size that I have been making for my sampler.  The pieces are so small and there are so many of them. It would have gone together better and faster if I would have just hand pieced it. I think it would be able to be machine pieced if the block was made larger.  I can't recommend making it as a 6" block.

I found two quilts made from this block-

 This one is shown by Helen Cook on Craftsy.

 This was is from an expired ebay listing for the pattern for this quilt.

Tomorrow-Martha Washington Star