Rectangular Blocks

The Rectangular Block category in my picture files is pretty slim.

There are not many....

Which is a little surprising since rectangles will

tessellate as well as squares (Any 4-sided shape

can be repeated without gaps in the pattern)

The quilt at the top of the page is a Chinese Coins

pattern, a strip quilt that has been turned into a rectangular

block by matching the strip color in a regular pattern.

If you made every 6th strip black it would look like a rectangular block.

Kind of related to rectangular string quilt blocks

Any strip quilt could probably be turned into a rectangular

block; here's a flying geese

I have two examples of this strip of squares pieced

as rectangular blocks.

which might make the pattern easier

to handle than long strips.

Some rectangular blocks are just squares squeezed into rectangles.

Any log cabin could be a rectangle.

Here's a double four patch made of rectangles rather than squares

You could squeeze any square block in EQ8

into a rectangle twice as long as it is wide.

You can also create rectangular blocks by cutting a classic square pattern in half.

It's half of a Rolling Star set with an equal size alternate rectangle.

BlopckBase 3805 a and b

Collection of the Kentucky Historical Society

It's hard to see the pattern here but I think it's half a star pieced of diamonds.

Something like this

just stacked up.

You could probably do this with any square block with a central

focus, like a Dresden Plate. I erased half of the block in EQ8

and rotated the blocks around.

A rectangular block set with a rectangle

Some of these work better than others.

Unusual Twin Sisters

An odd repeat

And hard to figure out the block...

but here it is with seam lines

BlockBase #2314

Twin Sisters

Selma & Patty Bouvier

Marge Simpson's Twin Sisters. 

It's just strangely colored like Selma and Patty.

Published pattern names include Twin Sisters, Pinwheel and Waterwheel

among other.

The seams intersect as an X in the center.

The Nancy Cabot column in 1933 in the Chicago Tribune invented

a sad story of a pair of twins---one of whom died before

her wedding---hence, the name.

I doubt the tale, however.

There's a lot of design potential

Here it is set in strips diagonally.

You can see what can happen when you set strips diagonally.

A few years ago the SewWhatevers made this little top in the

pattern from some William Morris prints.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/08/twin-sisters-in-morris-modernized.html

Strange Block Assembly in Pepto Bismol Pink

I posted this picture of a mid-20th-century quilt on my Facebook page, marveling

at how it was constructed---not in block fashion.

The quiltmaker made a relatively simple idea into a piecing extravaganza with the wheels of fans pieced into some white apple core shapes and then there is the x in bright pink.

It would have made a fine block with quarter circle fans in the corners.

 I drew it up in EQ8

8" block

Print this out at 8" for a 16" block.

I'm not too great at drawing fans but you get the picture.

While we were discussing this I couldn't

find the source for the one above but I did find a similar block.

Again with pink accents.

8"

8"

And then I saw this top on eBay a couple of weeks ago.

I had some trouble drawing the center area.

No source on this one either.

And what is with the pink???

BlockBase has several related designs with quarter circles in the corners but nothing like these three.

Cross Roads

Similar pattern structure. See a post here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2017/06/cross-roads.html

Whirlwind of Modernism

What a strange quilt! From the fabrics looks to be maybe 1960s.

From an online auction

I used those kind of florals in Home Ec.back then. I made a skirt of brown polished cotton. The blocks are rectangles and there are two alternating---

Well, I guess you could also classify it as a square cut in half but I did find it in that rather sparse section of  rectangular blocks in BlockBase.

BlockBase #222.8 in case you want to make one.

Published as Whirlwind From Woman's World magazine which collected some of their

articles on quilting in The Patchwork Book.

Their coloring in 3 fabrics makes for a more coherent design, which looks like a squat hexagon.

If you click on the source name in blue in BlockBase

it will tell you what I know about the magazine: A Chicago based

periodical. The Patchwork Book was published in 1931.

Someone kept it for thirty or so years and decided to make a modern design.