A CLOUD OF QUILT PATTERNS: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PATTERN IN BLOG FORM UPDATES & ADDITIONS BY BARBARA BRACKMAN

Monday, August 26, 2019

Pete & Repeat

A Turkey red and white quilt with a puzzling pattern.
Maybe from 1880-1925.
The pattern?


I always say go to a corner to figure out the repeat. But this top corner is no help.

The cool thing is the negative/positive pattern. A red windmill with
an identical white windmill in the negative space.
Pete and Repeat

I thought this might be the basic block.

But when I Photoshopped four together I got this. Not it.

I think this is it. A block with a pieced sash.

Here's the basic block, a simple nine patch.

BlockBase #1681 Calico Puzzle

Eveline Foland published the nine patch in the Kansas City Star in 1930,
 showing four blocks together.

Becky Brown made a pretty period block for our
Civil War Sampler book.
Here's the pattern for Becky's 8" Block:

It would be best to pattern this in increments of 3 as it's a nine patch.
So a 12 Inch Calico Puzzle block

I had BlockBase figure the rotary cutting for the block.



And I figured out the sashing on my own.
The strips finish to 4" wide and the larger squares in them to 4"
The four patches are pieced of  2" finished squares.

Pete and Repeat 
12 blocks 12"
plus 4" sashing
52" x 68"

Monday, August 19, 2019

Mystery Solved

A good-looking top from the 1890-1925 period
when there was so much variety in patterns.
Shouldn't be hard to find the name and who published it.

I always go to a corner to try to figure out the repeat.
This looks like it.
But it's not in BlockBase. It's a four-patch with a lot of triangles.
A strange construction

I drew the block in EQ8.

Maybe this is the repeat.
A four patch again

Should be somewhere in here but it's not.


Maybe this is the repeat.
Nah.

If you turn it on its side this could be the repeat, a star block
with sashing almost as wide as the block.
Nah.

What if you looked at it as that rare block construction---three parallel strips?
And here it is. BlockBase#3237. Bird's Nest, published in many sources.

A consensus on name.

That's it.
Three patches are not common because they are a little awkward to draft. I redrew it again in a logical fashion for piecing. The proportions of the nine patch make it best for a block that is a multiple of 8 so here is a pattern for a 16" block


A and D are the same size but I made cutting directions for different directionality.

A - Cut a square 3-7/8". Cut in half diagonally.


B - Cut a square 6-7/8". Cut in half diagonally.
C - Cut a square 2-7/8". Cut in half diagonally.
D - Cut a square 4-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 cuts.


E - Cut a square 3-3/8".

This pattern MAY be right.

Monday, August 12, 2019

Modern Cherries Quilt

A mid-20th-century applique?
Tough to tell from the photo.
The modernism in the block makes one think so.


Traditional cherry block reduced to the minimum.


The basics, a central rose and four pyramids of cherries.

Traditional cherry tree blocks from my Encyclopedia of Applique

So was it a commercial pattern or someone's design genius?

And then I found a close relative. This one in an online auction
from West Virginia

Also looks 20th century.
Positively festive!

Monday, August 5, 2019

Hospital Sketches #7: Rose of Sharon or Tennessee Rose


Our 7th applique block in the Hospital Sketches block of the month
is Tennessee Rose.

Block #7 Peggy Sandfort

Central floral---here with 4 diagonal arms but only three of them repeat.

This asymmetrical pattern is generally called Rose of Sharon as in #31.52 in my Encyclopedia of Applique. The variation on the left below is much like the July pattern with 7 rotating motifs. These roses are asymmetrical with several repeating buds or leaves but a single stem off to one corner.

Marie Webster called this one Rose of Sharon in her 1915 book.

As did Ruby Short McKim about 1930


The pattern, unlike some of the others we are doing this year in the Hospital Sketches BOM, has a variety of forms. They are all numbered  #31 in the Encyclopedia.

Here are a few:


Dated 1852, Mary Ann Poindexter
Collection of the D.A.R. Museum



From an album sampler dated 1860

From an Augusta Auction



Ruth Finley owned a similar quilt and called it
an "Early Rose of Sharon" in her 1929 book.

I subtracted a few things from the pattern for my
Hospital Sketches block.

Collection of the Historical Society of Plainfield.
New Jersey project & the Quilt Index.

This sampler dated 1857 has wreaths, 2 coxcomb & currants blocks,  2 triple tulips and a Whig rose/Rose of Sharon among the designs--several very popular designs and then some odd ones. (See center and upper corners.) 

Although most examples are situated on the diagonal some
seamstresses oriented the block north and south.





As you can see there was much personalization of the design.
No hints that a specific pattern was somehow passed around.


The block on the north/south may be a weak clue to a later
19th-century date.

East Tennessee quilt from Case Antiques

Same block in both quilts. Pattern passed around in east Tennessee?.

As far as names....

The name Rose of Sharon was in use as a pattern name. I've found two references about 1870 but with no pictures.
An 1869 Ohio fair awarded 25 cents to Isabel Hunter for a
"Bed quilt, rose of sharon" and an 1878 work of fiction mentioned a Rose of Sharon, adding some quilting color to a humorous about country people.


Marie Webster showed a second old quilt (below) with the single diagonal stem
and called it Virginia Rose

Carrie Hall's Virginia Rose in the collection of the Spencer Museum of
Art at the University of Kansas, block from the 1930s

Woman's World magazine sold a pattern about the same time,
calling it Tennessee Rose.

From the West Virginia project and the Quilt Index.
Winner of the contest for the most outrageous example.

Second prize