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:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2015/08/tessellations-2-four-sided-shapes.html

And squares running riot:
https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/09/squares-running-riot.html

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.

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.