Franklin County Star

Oh dear, another pattern without a BlockBase number.

It's a full-size quilt and I'd just leave it be as one individual's vision

but I see I have two examples.

From Pennsylvania eBay dealer GBBest.

Serious fading in the pale gray areas here has altered the pattern.

I bet those large diamonds that are so gray now were once blue or green...

and probably looked a lot more like this when it was newer.

Stella Rubin's shop

From Franklin County, Pennsylvania

And then I found a third....

It's obviously related to these end of the 19th century giant Pennsylvania stars like the one above that collector Phyllis Haders bought from Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

A few years ago I did a post on these whole-top designs often called Carpenter's Star (no BlockBase number there either.)

http://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2017/05/mennonite-stars-whole-top-designs.html

If you are looking for a little Y-seam practice this might be the pattern for you. There's a pattern for a 72" star in the link above and all you'd have to add is a star for the squares around the central star---the squares finish in the pattern to 10-7/8".

Or maybe you'd rather piece it as a block as in this quilt from Julie Silber's

inventory. No BlockBase number on this one either.

Debby Cooney made a comment in that post about the design source for the large Carpenter's Star:

"Franklin County, Pa., antique dealer Morgan Anderson considers this pattern to be a signature design in that area. He has seen & sold many since the early 1970s. [One you showed] came from the Martin family, Old Order River Brethren members for whom this star was a favorite; they made several. He sold Phyllis Haders the one shown here. "

Whig's Defeat in a Block

Whig's Defeat made in Tennessee, said to be dated 1844-1855 

in the collection of the American Museum in Britain

The Whig's Defeat design is a classic of Southern quilt making. Early examples are often found in Tennessee where the name and the quilts may relate to the 1844 Presidential election. Kentuckian Henry Clay, a Whig, was defeated by Tennessee's James Polk, a Democrat---hence the name Whig's Defeat.

The pattern can be constructed in a variety of ways.

Early versions tend to be a combination of pieced block and appliqued setting strips, but as decades passed many Southern quilters confined the pattern to a single block, both pieced and appliqued.

See another construction here at a recent post:
https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2019/09/whigs-defeat-or-ladyfingers.html

Amadilla Lyons, Louisiana project & the Quilt Index

This quilt was said to have been made by an aunt for an 1890 wedding.

The current owner called it Grandmother's Engagement Ring, a

less political name used by Mountain Mist for their version of the design.

The piecing was in a square placed on point and the applique went outside the center square.

The BlockBase number is 2529.

They actually wanted you to construct it as pieced fan block with appliqued

sash but they showed it like this.

Texas dealer John Sauls has two similar quilts in his inventory. Number of leaves or fingers and number of spiky points in the fan differ but the basic construction is a square inside a square. Looks to be after 1880 when the pattern isolated into blocks is most popular.

These solid color quilts are so hard to date by the fabrics. Style & square in a square format

is probably the most reliable clue.

1880-1930

Source?

Unlike the older versions the square-in-a-square patterns do not interconnect.

As in many Southern quilts of the 1880-1930 years the block dominates. 

Sashing provides strong visual boundaries.

Source?

The examples in the photo files are all done in the solid fabrics

typical of Southern quilts of those years, the fabrics produced in

Southern mills.

Emma Wood's block is slightly different as the edges of the center square are not straight lines.

I brightened up the photos to show you the red and ?-color triple strip sashing.

Emma Woods, New Hope Township, North Carolina project

and the Quilt Index. 

The family called this Queen Victoria's Fan.

http://www.quiltindex.org/news/page/18/

Source?

No sashing here but the seam lines indicate a square-in-a-square construction.

The actual quilts, which all look to date from that 1880-1930 era, vary so much we can doubt the quiltmakers had a published pattern. And we haven't found anything just like the square-in-a-square design till Carrie Hall published her book in 1935.

Here's Carrie Hall's block from the collection of the

Spencer Museum of Art. Interesting that Carrie used solid

colors as if she were trying to copy the Southern chrome orange and oxblood

brown color scheme with what was available in Leavenworth, Kansas

in the 1920s and early '30s.

Since it's in BlockBase I can easily give you a pattern.

It's on two 8-1/2 x 11 sheets. You have

to paste them together.

The pattern is for a 12" block.

The center square with the fans should finish to 8-1/2"---cut 9".

Cut 4 corner triangles by cutting 2 squares 6-7/8" in half

with a diagonal line.

Grandmother's Pride

Here's the perfect example of ca. 1960 style

Rules:

Any color goes with any color

In a time of new dyes giving us new colors

quilters embraced every shade with enthusiasm.

The pattern:  A variation on Grandmother's Pride from

the syndicated Laura Wheeler column.

A kind of art-deco update to the fan design.

"Laura" (a fictional human being) showed a triangle at the bottom of

the design...

Which the seamstress ignored in the quilt at the

top of the page. She had some rules though.

Plains in the center patches, prints next and the

squares are all variations of geometrical plaids.

BlockBase #3341

Quilters Newsletter named it Empress in 1978.

It does look like a crown.

The Laura Wheeler patchwork patterns began in the 1930s

and were widely syndicated until the 1970s.

This one seems to have been popular.

Blazing Star of Kentucky

Where this photo came from is a mystery, but it's a lovely quilt,

apparently made in 1918 by Minnie Lee Roberts Mitchell in McCurtain County,

Oklahoma, referred to as Blazing Star of Kentucky.

Minnie Mitchell (1884-1965)

See her file at Find-a-Grave

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/34350518/minnie-lee-mitchell

Minnie lived in southeastern Oklahoma, down by the Arkansas line.

Mary Bird Brooks Logan County,

Kentucky project & the Quilt Index

Same block

They did love those diamond stars in Kentucky

so the name seems quite appropriate. 

An elaborate version also from the Kentucky project

by Minerva Wilson Boardman, Bourbon County---Many diamonds.

And as I can't find an earlier published name Blazing Star of Kentucky is perfect.

You'd think it would be in BlockBase but no---meaning the design wasn't published in any major pattern source before 1970. It should be on this page, right around #3781,

Which the Ladies Art Company published as Blazing Star

Here it is from their 1898 catalog.

But this Blazing Star isn't the same block as Minnie's. The triangles are smaller

in the corners and there are two pieces in the edge triangles.

Carrie Hall's version of #3781, block in the Spencer Museum of

Art at the University of Kansas

And Jinny Beyer's pattern.

 

By Mary Jane (Jennie) Newsome Pilcher, (1860- 1957) Yadkin County, North Carolina

 from the North Carolina project and the Quilt Index.

It puzzles me that this simple version was never published, but it must have been handed around among Southern quilters. Maybe too plain and common-sense to need a printed pattern.

Jennie's is a classic Southern quilt, lots of chrome orange and the signature triple-strip sashing. Jenny was a professional quiltmaker, sewing this one for bachelor neighbor John Wesley Doub who kept it to pass down.

See a post about Jennie here: 

https://womensworkquilts.blogspot.com/2019/11/sewing-for-money-in-yadkin-county.html

Martha Norris Fancher (1857-1932), Cocke County, Tennessee.

Tennessee project and the Quilt Index