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

Monday, December 2, 2019

Dresden Plate from McCall's

Neva Sims Baird
Louisiana Project and the Quilt Index

An innovative design in the 1930s. Neva's quilt follows a popular pattern.


Who originated the variation of the Dresden plate with four pointy
spokes among the curved ones? Probably a designer at McCall's magazine
in 1933

Dresden Plate and Fan Design for Quilts
#74 was the Dresden Plate

Here's the McCall's pattern, which many followed quite closely.


The border was part of the plan.


New Quilts, Old Designs by Elisabeth May Blondel
in McCall's



In her 2010 AQSG paper "McCall’s Role in the Early Twentieth-Century Quilt Revival,"Virginia Gunn dates the pattern to 1933 and notes they sold it until 1954.

Their modus operandi was hot iron transfers on tissue
 sold in a packet just like clothing patterns.


Elisabeth May Blondel was the company's needlework editor from 1920 to 1952, responsible for the magazine and needlework periodicals in their various incarnations. 


Blondel was a native New Yorker, born in 1883. She was single while she edited the magazine. Censuses find her living with her family, her mother and then sisters and brother in the city, but she also mentions a home in New Milford, Connecticut. In 1955 at the age of 72 (she might not have owned to being quite that old) she married Edward Hall Gardner, retired Professor of Business Administration at the University of Wisconsin.





I hadn't noticed the McCall's publication when I indexed the pattern as #3629 in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. I'd guess McCall's was the real source.



See a post on regular Dresden Plates
https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2017/05/wheel-of-fortune.html

I notice that EQ calls the green pieces here blades and the print pieces petals
which is probably better than "pointy spokes"

I can't find a pattern to send you to. I'd imagine McCall's still has it in copyright.

6 comments:

  1. This is a great variation on the dresden plate. Thanks for sharing it.

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  2. I love those oversized big McCall’s needlework magazines. I have several of them in my basement. My mom got them and I used to pore over them.

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  3. I remember seeing many old quilts with the scalloped edge Dresden Plate. When did all pointed Dresden's come into the fore... when no one wanted to hand applique them anymore?

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  4. Wow! We have a quilt in the collection of the New England Quilt Museum which appears to have been made from this pattern. It is made in a variety of 30's prints and has yellow as the dominant color.

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  5. I have the original McCalls pattern that I picked up at an estate sale or somewhere. I have it displayed in my sewing room.

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    Replies
    1. I just found the McCalls patter #74 among some old quilting books I have. This had to have been my Great Grandmothers pattern. What a great thing to find as she was the one that planted the quilting seed in me.

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