Not Square Blocks: Curved Shell Shapes

Collections for a Cause: Love

 kit from Moda

I've been thinking about the shell shape and how it tessellates.

See a post here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/03/tessellations-9-curved-shapes.html

And a Pinterest page here:

https://www.pinterest.com/blockbase/blockbase-one-patch-curves/

One could design clamshell shaped blocks and fill them with patchwork.

Clamshell by Karen Stone

Well, it's already been done.

 I looked in my files of curved blocks in vintage quilts, which is rather limited.

Sunrise

Ardis and Robert James Collection

International Quilt Study Center & Museum

#1997-007-0039

I've been blogging about this particular pattern for years

I've seen maybe ten in vintage versions

Holly posted a tattered but beautiful piece she bought last year.

This one looks a little older.

The quilting is so nice---you don't see much

of that fancy quilting in the years 1900-1920.

And now quilters are making them again;

this one from Cathi at Quilt Obsession

My question has been---if the pattern was popular enough that so many survive how was it passed around? I'd never seen it published.

But then I happened on this quilt top from about 1900.

Not the most graceful pattern in the world.

I realized I had seen it before.

Two on eBay in the last year. This one a pair of blocks.

And here it is in BlockBase. Somebody actually published

a pattern for this.

It's Paragon from Hearth and Home magazine in the early 20th century.

UPDATE: Wilene writes:

Paragon, also known as Vase of Flowers, is indeed part of the "Hearth and Home Collection" but was published in American Woman, October 1908.

UPDATE 2

I found Paragon in Mildred Dickerson's scrapbook of Comfort

Magazine patterns. 

Now I realize where BlockBase #4099 came from.

Say you wanted to show someone this pattern

but you had to fit it into a square format in your magazine.

You'd look at the repeat

You'd draft it to a square

and all your readers would understand just what you meant.

Or not.

And that is how we wound up

with the blocks above.

Massive communication problems.

Perhaps the quilt that was the inspiration for the pattern

looked like this.

"Paragon". A good name for a hard-to-piece design.

Note that Paragon has two rows of spiky points

whereas all the antique clamshell patterns have only one row.

The only other antique shell-shaped block I've seen is this

one from Julie Silber's shop.

See more about the pieced clamshells at these posts from four or five years ago.

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/06/unknown-pattern.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/10/unknown-patterns-swirl-in-star-pickles.html