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Monday, September 25, 2017

Rainbow Quilt---Shaded Squares #2289

20th century quilt from the Arizona Project and the Quilt Index.
I bet the tans were once green.

One of my favorite designs, nothing but squares.

Shaded on the diagonal.

Popular about 1900 to show off these
fashionable new prints at the time:

grey, black, pink red and blue, blue, blue.

I made a repro in the 1990s
when those colors were fashionable again.

I noticed the design actually has a BlockBase number
2289, published a few decades after the first craze.
Rainbow Quilt in Country Gentleman magazine in 1932.


This one from French72 Antiques is colored true to the name.

Even though I've already made one the version below is
making me think about another.

Fussy-cut polka dots.


More on tessellating squares:

Monday, September 18, 2017

Bouquet Quilt Block

I've been pinning pictures of quilts date-inscribed 1853 and
came across this pretty applique quilt from an eBay post in the last year.

It's a beautiful quilt in worn condition.


The embroidered inscription says 
"Margaret Stambaugh
Israel Stambaugh
1853"

Unusual border with dots and tear drops echoing the
smaller block in the main part of the quilt.

UPDATE: Laurette Carroll tells me she was the lucky bidder on
this quilt.

The unusual main block works in negative and positive fashion.
Is it a star?
Is it a ring of 8 flowers?

It does have an Encyclopedia of Applique number
#14.42
A Traditional Block published in the magazine Comfort
as Bouquet Quilt Block. 
Probably published about 1910 with that name.
It's a lot cooler block than it looks in the drawing because of that negative/positive aspect.

This pink & white version (once Turkey red and white)
also shows the ambiguous nature of the design

The negative/positive action works better in the top block
because the flowers
actually touch.


Here's a terrible snapshot of another mid-19th-century version.

These are the only three examples I have.

A 1935 issue of Comfort
The magazine had a high circulation about 1910 and
was an important source for quilt patterns, but
this pattern is a generation or two older than the magazine.
Wish I knew what Margaret Stambaugh called it.

UPDATE:
I did find a fourth similar quilt---offered on eBay this summer:

Looks mid-19th century-maybe 1850 - 1880?


And this pieced variation from Augusta Auctions
a couple of years ago.


Monday, September 11, 2017

Ocean Wave: Category Five

An Amish version of the Ocean Wave

While watching storm coverage during this horrid hurricane season some of us quilt nuts have been posting pictures of Ocean Wave quilts on a social site.


Questions include just what is an Ocean Wave.
I always have an opinion and here's what I think.
The pattern appeared about 1875 and was quite popular during that era of scrappy calicoes.

About 1900
The large squares could be set on the straight

From Laura Fisher's inventory


About 1900
Or on the diagonal.



Fifty years later Ruby McKim defined the design and name in the late 1920s. She showed it 
as a block but you can see by her dotted lines that she was a little iffy as to whether that was the best way to show you how to make one.

If you made it as a square like McKim showed it
you'd have a nice enough design but the traditional quilts were not constructed like this.

This one might have been made from McKim's block with the corner
triangles in green making another square as a secondary design.
But there are no seams in those green squares.


Everybody knew it wasn't a traditional square block.

After 1880

That unpieced white square was a good place to put some feather wreaths.

1880-1900

It is a hexagonal block---a long six-sided shape.

The standard Category 1 Ocean Wave blocks have 24 half-square 
triangles like McKim's sketch .

Set with squares.

Mary Madden holding up one from the collection
of the Kansas Museum of History.

Many quiltmakers used a strong dark/light shading pattern for those 24
triangles whether they were using scraps or a
two-color palette.


From Buckboard Antiques

You could vary the shading to get different effects.

Two quilts that look to be from Southeastern Pennsylvania.




Pinwheels in the waves.



So 24 triangles seems to be the standard.
But there are other categories....


Category 2 
 42 triangles per six-sided block. 
Square smaller in proportion


Category 3--lotsa triangles

I gave up counting

Category 4 - More triangles.  Notice the pink pinwheels in the center of each X


Category 5
Susan McCord's version in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum


Here's the scale.


Annette Curran Ratzenberger made one inspired by McCord's.

She says it has over 10,000 pieces.
Category 5.