Bride's Bouquet or Nosegay

I probably have a dozen photos of quilts made in this pattern

from the 1930s and '40s.

It was quite popular despite its set-in Y seams.

I never know where to file it because it's so miscellaneous.

But it has a number in the BlockBase Miscellaneous category.

BlockBase #4052

The earliest publication I've found was in the Rural New Yorker farm newspaper in 1933. They called it Bride's Bouquet or Nose Gay Quilt.

The Laura Wheeler/Alice Brooks company

syndicated a pattern--maybe a year or two later.

And in 1937 when the Kansas City Star was asking readers to send in their

favorites Anna A. Threlkeld of Waynesville, Missouri sent The Nosegays.

You could set it by rotating the blocks, which

several quilters did.

Pat Sloan found this pastel delight on eBay.

Here's a variation. Cockcomb attributed to H. H. VerMehren's mail order business

in the 1930s.

An 8" finished pattern from BlockBase

See Tim Quilts for a post. I am not surprised he has a top in the pattern. It's just the kind of thing he likes.

https://timquilts.com/tag/brides-bouquet-quilt-block/

One of a Kind?

You don't often come across a one-of-a-kind 19th century pattern. This flamboyant

9-block seems to be unique.

Scioto Imhoff Danner sold a pattern for it in the mid-20th century. Here's a photo from 1958.

The quilt was in her collection and she showed it in two of her catalogs. She 

gave it to the Denver Art Museum in 1971.

The latest catalog attributes it to Mary Black.

Her catalog caption called it Prince's Feather. She said: 

"There are many variations...I saw a very similar one on George Washington's bed at Mount Vernon."

She'd probably seen this quilt at Mount Vernon, which Woman's Day magazine called Washington's Plume. It's quite a bit different.

The pattern has a number in my Encyclopedia of Applique, but it's the only one I've ever seen...

although there are variations.

I wonder if anyone made one from Mrs. Danner's pattern.

UPDATE: Somebody did. Here's a quilt that looks to be mid-20th-century

from eBay seller Vintage Blessings.

It's a flamboyant feather. Print this out and see what you can

come up with.

Update in September. 2019. Found another example in an online auction.

The yellow is apparently nylon tricot.

Goblet, Tumbler or Water Glass

A rather popular pattern in the 20th century.

BlockBase #943 or 944

Wilene Smith found the earliest published pattern in

American Woman magazine, August 1907.

Mrs. E.C. Turner of Nunda, Illinois asked the editor for a Tumbler Design in 1906. I wondered if she  meant the other Tumbler design, which was quite the fashion for charm quilts at the time.

Tumbler charm quilt.

But apparently this is what she wanted. "I saw a quilt pieced in this fashion when I was but a girl, and cannot remember how the bottom of the 'tumbler' was arranged."

A tumbler was what we might call a glass or goblet.

The pattern was often done in the newly fashionable

blues, grays, blacks and reds.

Purchased in Ohio, from the Arizona project & the Quilt Index.

A sampler of indigo blues.

In 1930 pattern designer Eveline Foland drew The Goblet Quilt

for the Kansas City Star.

Carrie Hall was apparently taken with Foland's idea of a floral

pattern in the goblet. Her block is in the Spencer Museum of Art.

In 1934 the Star published the design again, this time with the names Water Glass or

W.C.T.U. block. The names refer to the Women's Christian Temperance Union

that advocated water as the beverage of choice.

Thompson's Spa in Boston

A few years later a reader contributed a variation of the pattern with one less seam.

The Star patterns had an influence as several mid-20th-century examples

survive.

We really don't have much evidence that these pieced tumbler quilts had anything to do with

the temperance crusade. The image of an appliqued footed glass is found earlier in quilts.

What's in the glasses?

Water or wine?

Goblet and decanter in applique from a Long Island, New York quilt dated 1857 in

Gay's collection at Sentimental Stitches:

http://sentimentalstitches.net/2016/08/01/1857-album-quilt-blocks-25-26-27-28/

Read Wilene Smith's essay on Temperance Quilts here:

http://quilthistorytidbits--oldnewlydiscovered.yolasite.com/drunkards-path-and-t-quilts.php

Job's Troubles

Cindy's Antique Quilts has this quilt for sale. It's from the 1930s (the

fabrics are orange and green) and

made in Texas.

See it here:

https://www.cindysantiquequilts.com/dynapage/IP691.htm

I remembered the pattern from the Quilts of Tennessee files at the Quilt Index.

Bets Ramsey and Merikay Waldvogel found an almost identical pattern in their Tennessee project.

Job's Trouble quilt made by Lizzie Nelson Burks (1852-1909)

of Rutherford County, Tennessee 

There is some question about the date. It was entered in a Texas fair

in 1910 so that was assumed to be the time it was made but it is

too fancy to be 1910 and Lizzie Burks died in 1909.

The stuffed work quilting in this quilt is exceptional. I would

think it was quilted before 1875 when Lizzie was in her twenties or so.

See it here:

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4C-83-470

These are the only two examples of the pattern I've seen. It's in my Encyclopedia of Applique as #16.63---drawn from Lizzie's example. I called it Cockscomb and Currants and it is related to this design popular after 1840.

I wonder if the Texas quilt was made after seeing Lizzie's at the 1910 Texas fair?

Note how the coloring is the same down to the two orange circles at the base of the floral.

When Lizzie's family brought the quilt in to be documented they called it Job's Troubles---perhaps referring to all those berries.

I found a little information about Lizzie. Her husband was Thomas Benton Burks. They are buried near Burks' Cave and Burks Hill Road in Rutherford County in the Burks Cemetery. Rutherford County is in middle Tennessee, southeast of Nashville.

Thomas Benton Burks's stone

Born June ? 1830?

The photographer who found T.B. Burks stone couldn't find Lizzie's but gave her dates as March 29, 1852 – April 4, 1909.

https://rutherfordcemetery.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/31-burks-cemetery/

Print this out 8" wide and you'll have one-fourth of a block

about 16"