Wheel of Mystery

A complicated graphic but looking at the block it's pretty simple.

A Maltese Cross style block in a bold sashing.

Simple, except for getting 8 seams to meet in the center.

BlockBase #2764

The oldest name is Winding Ways from the Ladies Art Company

or maybe Nashville from Hearth & Home magazine about the same time.

Buttercup from a Grandma Dexter catalog in the 1930s

The design was most popular in this counterchange shading

alternating dark & light blocks. To get the repeat you need to

see it as four blocks.

So it's also in Four-Patches as #1512.

Pink & white from Cindy's Antiques.

The pattern requires some real piecing skill in this four-patch format.

Precise matching of a lot of curved seams...

You could make it a little easier and draw those

side seams as straight lines.

Then it's another number #2709

published in the Star as Ice Cream Cone

Straight sides. Quarter circle curves,

Or just give up the curved seam idea completely and call it a Kaleidoscope... 

with a different number #2704

Parquetry for a Quilt Block

Kansas City Star

See a post here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/03/kaleidoscope.html

A Pitcher of Water

A few weeks ago Ileana down in Texas posted this

unusual pitcher quilt on ebay

1930 -1960, estimated date.

A close relative

perhaps a little older with more triangles.

Not a published pattern.

Meant to look like a glass pitcher with cut or pressed design.

There may be a meaning to the pitcher image that we don't see...

Bayou Bend Collection

Houston, Texas

...symbolizing a pitcher of water, the temperance drink

in contrast to the whiskey jug.

The Orangetown Museum in Rockland County, New York owns an album quilt made for Elizabeth Griffiths in 1852. A poem describes the symbolism in some of the blocks. For this appliqued pitcher:

"Then the one by Mrs. Sarah Haring

Has a flower like the rose of Sharon,

Also a pitcher, let up fill our glass

And let us have the Maine law come to pass."

In a post 8 years ago I wrote: "The Maine Law was a temperance law---I think we can interpret this as a water pitcher symbolizing support for temperance."

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/05/album-quilt-with-key.html

Don't have many pitcher quilts in the picture files and no published patterns.

This string variation from a Lone Star Study Group meeting.

Looks about 1900-1930.

Sadie Mallison's Pattern Quilt

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1D-FC-8DA

These sampler quilts of pattern blocks are fun for those who love patchwork patterns. This one as recorded by the Massachusetts project and the Quilt Index, attributed to Sarah Mallison of Beckett, Massachusetts in Berkshire County.

It's unusual for these quilts in that it is inscribed with two dates and two names: "Sarah Mallison 1905/ Bertha M ?1937" We can assume Sarah pieced the top in 1905 and Bertha tied it over 30 years later.

One wonders where Sarah got her patterns. In 1905 she'd have had access to many publications that dealt in patterns---magazines and needlework company catalogs. Patterns like the house and tree and drunkard's path were widely available but others have some mystery as to the source.

Like this red and white sawtooth block. Where did Sarah find it?

Was it published or handed around from a friend.

When looking at these pattern samplers we have to keep in mind that many seamstresses did not use paper patterns but made up a block to keep the pattern. Those collections of quilts "to make someday" often wound up as sampler tops.

The Nancy Page newspaper column by Florence LaGanke Harris published 

the design as Crows Foot but that was in 1934. Sarah must

have had another source.

Quilt in the design from 1960s?

Possibly from the Nancy Page

The other source I have for the design is the Ladies' Home Journal in 1896,

which may indeed where Sarah found it.

Sarah (Sadie) Hazzard (Hazard) Mallison

1842-1916

From her Find-A-Grave site.

She may be in her forties here in the 1870s.???

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/116791626/sarah-mallison

When Sarah's descendant brought the quilt in to be photographed not much was known about her but  today we can easily find her grave and a photo there. Bertha Crow Mallison (1888-1982) is buried in the same cemetery in Beckett, Massachusetts. She must have been a relative, a daughter in law perhaps, wife of son Charles.

I added Sarah's sampler to her grave file as it looks pretty certain she had a hand in it. I should look at each of the blocks and see what the source was..... But just like Sadie I am probably never going to get around to making all those quilts or finding all those patterns.

Berkshire Eagle, 1916

Bouquet in a Fan & Relatives

An odd quilt but familiar to fans of Kansas City Star designs.

#1399.6 Bouquet in a Fan by Edna Marie Dunn in 1933

Dunn did most of the Star patterns in the mid-20th century but she did not

sign many. This might have been one of her original designs.

A year earlier the Star had published Nosegay with a nine patch.

Farm Journal published it too

but even though the design was widely in print

very few quilters attempted it

On line auction

From the Indiana project & the Quilt Index

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=68-104-8C7

Twenty-year old Olive Weber Spiegel of Sumiria, Indiana worked with her parents on this quilt in 1938; her father John Weber helped with the design and her mother Lillian Weber quilted it.

The problem may be the basic pattern---whether there's a star or a ninepatch in the center---It just isn't that graceful.

Unless you set in groups of four.

A variation offered by Nancy Cabot

in the Chicago Tribune. 

Lovers Knot

\

Barbara R sends pictures of a quilt top partially quilted

that she inherited from her mother. She's thinking her

mom might have purchased it.

 74” x 86”

She knew it was a Laura Wheeler pattern Lover's Knot

3010 in BlockBase in a page of similar hard-to-piece blocks.

Not often made. This one is from an online auction

Here's a clipping from the Pottstown Mercury in 1933 or 1934.

Easy to Make in the best traditions of the Colonial needlewoman.

Huh?

Here's an updated version for a red & white version from Lovelli Quilts.

https://lovelliquilts.me/tag/white/#:~:text=I%20designed%20several%20quilts%20with%20these%20blocks.%20Some%20are%20more

I recolored the BlockBase drawing to make it look more

like the original and I see I thought that there was an

extra seam in the long ribbons extending into the corners.

That would make it easier to piece.

The original pattern was a little hard to figure out from the sketch

and I see my proportions are off too.

I revised it a little. Print this 8-inch pattern out at 150%.

And as with most Laura Wheeler designs....good luck.