I've been thinking of doing a fully hand-pieced, hand-quilted quilt, just to say that I did it :) And what better one to do than a quilt that is Civil War based, with reproduction fabrics, what with the anniversary of the war starting in a just a few months? I figure that gives me four years to finish it (sounds about right, at the pace I generally work, even when making machine based quilts)

I'm still pretty much a beginner, though (only made a couple of quilts so far), and a lot of the patterns/kits I've looked at use a lot of flying geese and other diagonals -- stuff I haven't worked with yet. Since I'm going to do this one quilt all by hand, I'd like to keep it simple. Has anyone seen any good Civil War based patterns that are composed of mostly squares or rectangles?

How about a BOW block a week). Barbara Brackman is doing one on her blog http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com check it out. If nothing else she will have some great ideas for a pattern. She is doing it also for the anniversary of the Civil War and will have 52 blocks. It started Jan. 2 but she is keeping past blocks on the site.
I have my first 2 done.

Check out these two sites. My avatar quilt is the album pattern made with Moda Civil War Crossings fabric by Barbara Brackman. Hope this helps and is what you are looking for.

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/

http://www.barbarabrackman.com/newengland.pdf

Apparently I was posting at the same time as kathyd, sorry.

Great minds think alike!