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Monday, April 30, 2018

Georgetown Circle

Georgetown Circle pattern from the Ladies Art Company.
A sunflower with two rings of checkerboard and an outer ring of triangles.


Georgetown Circle by Sally Lovelady, Baton Rouge, before 1964.
Louisiana Project & the Quilt Index

BlockBase #3443. 
It was published as plain old Georgetown in
1896 in an Oklahoma farm newspaper. 
Which came first the Oklahoma pattern or the Ladies Art Company's?

You don't see many made at the turn of the last century when
the pattern first appeared.

American Museum of Folk Art collection.
Most of the vintage examples seem to date from
the mid-20th century

From Sue Garman's blog

Sue and her friends made blocks inspired by this one.

The three above look to have been constructed as circular blocks with
a squeezed square in between.

Like this.

Elizabeth Runyon used a conventional square block format. 
From the Louisiana project, perhaps from the 1970s. 
They note it's polyester.


A 1986 version from the Nebraska project by Sarah Fahrenbruch Hoak

Some master stitchers have accepted the challenge.

Kathleen McCrady

Particularly in Australia

Georgetown Turnaround by Trish Harper

Georgetown Circle by Michele Yeo

Georgetown on My Mind by Jen Kingwell

You shouldn't have any trouble finding a pattern for the three above.



Monday, April 23, 2018

Noxall Sunburst

An interesting if challenging design.
Points plus 8 seams meeting in the center.

Published as Noxall by Hearth and Home magazine
about 1900-1910
BlockBase #3357

Noxall?

Apparently it was a catchy name, as in Knocks All the Competition.

Nox-All Hats

Noxall harness
And there was a Noxall flour
for which a small community in Missouri was named.

By Polly Tyndall from the North Carolina Project
and the Quilt Index. (1880-1920)

If one ring of spiky points was good two was better.

Another variation without a number or a name.
Just four seams meeting in the center.


Mariner's Compass?
A magazine page.
  
A different proportion by the Curry Sisters from the North Carolina Project
and the Quilt Index, about 1880-1920.

You could piece it over paper foundations

I exported BlockBase #3557 into Electric Quilt
and drew extra lines going north/south and east/west.
Print this out on an 8-1/2 x 11" inch
sheet for a paper pieced arc. If the line
along the bottom and right sides = 7-1/2" you'll
have a 15" finished sunburst.
The inner triangles are template pieced.


Monday, April 16, 2018

Doves, Blue Birds and Bats

Block with a pattern that's hard to figure out

It's BlockBase #3768, an 8-pointed diamond star,
shaded to look like birds or fish or rockets.

The star points contain two diamonds, one half the
size of the other.

The pattern is easier to see in this version from about 1910.


1880-1910?

Probably inspired by a pattern from the Ladies Art Company Catalog in 1898
with the name Flying Bat.

The Ladies Art Company may be the original source.


Plenty of stitchers made it.

Quilt with a label dating it to 1904 by Ann C. Barns, 
San Jose. From the Arizona Project and the Quilt Index.


You could also get the effect with the conventional star with points of nine diamonds.

Shading the small diamonds like this...

Which is what this quiltmaker seems to have done.

A shading suggested in the 1930s by the Spool Cotton Company for
Four Doves in a Window.

And copied by the Chicago Tribune's Nancy Cabot column.


You could combine the two ideas.


Mountain Mist called the pattern
Blue Birds for Happiness and popularized the rather minimalist
shading, which gives the effect of the four rotating birds.



Mary Catherine Hooten Robb, made in Illinois, from the 
West Virginia project and the Quilt Index.
Even more minimalism. 

This quilt before it faded probably followed the red and blue shading  Notice the blue birds along the bottom border. I bet there was a lot more blue in it once. It is a cool effect now that it has faded, though.

Garden maze sash

The pattern was published many times with many names.


Dove in the Window by Ruby McKim in
the Kansas City Star, 1929


Four Doves, Nancy Page syndicated column in the 1930s

And I made a mess of the whole thing in my original Encyclopedia of
Pieced Quilt Patterns. Much confusion about where those seam lines actually were.


And here's Kathy Doughty's version---she rotated the points
so they are all going the same way.