Asymmetrical Open Wreath

Block from quilt dated 1847 for Bernard Nadal

Smithsonian Collection.

What makes an album sampler a Baltimore Album quilt?

If I see 3 typical BAQ patterns in a sampler I file it in the BAQ file.

This one from a Hap Moore auction has several typical Baltimore designs---

that distinctive eagle with the flag, woven basket

and this one.

An asymmetrical kind of wreath or bouquet,

or as Elly Sienkiewicz classified it a Lyre Wreath.

It looks rather free-form and naturalistic and you'd never notice it as 

a "pattern", except that you notice it all the time.

Quilt dated 1847 from a 1985 ad in the Clarion magazine,

offered by Kelter Malce Antiques.

It's the layout of the flowers with one popping in from the lower left...

to fill an empty space above the stem juncture.

The two sides of the open wreath are not the same.

The top left stem curves in to fill another space.

It's a pretty way to fill a square block with flowers.

It's in my Encyclopedia of Applique # 43.65, "unnamed from an album dated 1847" (probably Bernard Nadal's). Page 135.

BAQ in the collection of the American

Folk Art Museum.

Does that space-filling floral ever pop in from the bottom left in a BAQ?

BAQ at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum

The flowers can be large or small, growing as triplets

or alone.

BAQ documented in the Arizona quilt project.

The earliest I've seen the pattern is in BAQs dated 1846, which

is also the earliest date-inscribed Baltimore album quilts I have

photos of.

Dated 1846 by Elizabeth Stansbury. Online Auction.

So it was part of the BAQ phenomenon from the beginning

Elly Sienkiewicz has been using the pattern

and inspiring other to make it too: Flowers popping in from left 

in this reproduction.

You also find the pattern in repeat block quilts.

All I have with this photo is a signature picture,

which the seller thought said

"Miss Harriet Welker

Middletown

Ohio"

Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting did a pattern on a beauty from the IQSCM collection

in their December, 2012 issue. Here's a link to a free download. They called it Blossom Wreath.

http://wwwcdn.fonsandporter.com/wp-content/uploads/ANTIQUE_Blossom_Wreath.pdf

I've seen several in online auctions over the past dozen years.

But one difference in most of the repeat block designs is the space-filling 

floral pops in from the bottom center.

The wreath is still asymmetrical with more of an arc on the left 

than the right.

Online auction from 2007.

I'd guess these are from the mid-19th century.

But here's one that looks more 20th-century 

at least in the fabric and binding.

Another 20th century version shown

in the Detroit News in 1934.

The woman holding the four-block quilt

said her grandmother made it recently.

Here's a version of Harriet Welker's. Print it 8"

or double it to 16".

Can't get enough Baltimore Album???? Check out the Smithsonian's picture file on Bernard Nadal's 1847 quilt.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556185

Tulips on Bernard Nadal's quilt