I am getting ready to handquilt a top made in. 1900. It's 9 inch churn blocks alternating with plain blocks. What design would you use in the plain blocks that would be true to the era in which the top was made? I'll use cotton batting and a knife edge on it.

I recommend visiting the Quilted Pineapple site. She is a LA quilter but has done a lot of research on antique quilting designs. She has some beautiful examples on her site. Particularly the Hospitality quilt she recently did would work quite well.

http://www.thequiltedpineapple.com/p...eye-candy.html

You can also get ideas here:
http://quiltingstencils.com/viewallblocks.aspx

Also you could repeat the lines of the churn dash block so from the back it would look like all the square had been the churn dash.

Lots of good ideas! Please let us know what you decide and post pictures!

I did one using the Baptist fan pattern & marked on the muslin backing & quilted on the backing also! It turned out great!

this was my first thought, too