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.