Strange Vegetation?

From an online auction. By the fabrics, which offer some clues to date--- 1840-1890. The madder red print isn't much help but you don't see that overdyed green after 1890 or so.

The pattern???

A four-patch with quarters that are not equal sized.

BlockBase has several of these Unequal Four Patches but not this one.

Some kind of unknown vegetation?

So just as I am wrapping up this short post I realize the block in the picture is upside down.

It's not that strange after all.

The white strip is the stem.

Not that strange, except in coloring.

Snakes Again

Snakes

By Lucy Young Mingo (1931-) Boykin, Alabama (Gee's Bend)

About 1970

Museum at Michigan State University Collection

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-2994

Lucy who has quilted with the Gee's Bend Cooperative

with one of her Pine Burr quilts.

Lucy's pattern is a popular design that was published in the Kansas City Star 

as Rainbow, sent in by Ida Best of Locust Grove, Oklahoma

It's BlockBase #3350

I think I made an error here though in

giving it the name Drunkard's Trail, another KCS pattern.

It's the same structure but now I see that Drunkard's

Trail is supposed to be a string quilt.

Like this one from Pepper Cory's collection.

I doubt the many versions in the photo files had anything to do with the Kansas City

Star. The pattern with it's two unpieced arcs was probably handed around.

From Laura Fisher's inventory

And it would seem it wasn't really popular until the 1950s.

The pictures I have don't look 1940s or earlier.

Susie Ponds's quilt on the cover of Maude Southwell Wahlman's

Signs & Symbols was made in 1979.

Green Snake Quilt, Susie Ponds, 1979

It may very well be a phenomenon of the 1960s & '70s.

Julie Silber's inventory

With this possible exception--- a crazy quilt/fan.

An accurate pattern must have been valued as you can draw it all wrong

as I did in BlockBase. The curves have to be just right to bend back upon each other.

Here's a better pattern. 

Or use InkLingo on your computer to print patterns.

https://lindafranz.com/blog/drunkards-trail-quilts-with-inklingo/

Or buy templates

http://www.quilttemplates.com/favoritequilts3.html

Fancy Applique x 3

In 1932 the B.C. Taber store in Norwalk Ohio had a big quilt show,

quilts on all three floors.

The store about 1890

 Bet  you wish you were there, if only to examine this unusual quilt in the foreground

Below, a twin 

A nine-block applique from the mid-19th century o

n the cover of Quilt magazine in Fall 1989

They didn't tell you much about the quilt they called Compass Rose

 inside but they did give a pattern. You can't see much of the vine border.

I thought they might be the same quilt but the one shown in 1932 has more layers in the central floral.

However, one can imagine that the quiltmakers were neighbors.

And then there's a third

But this one, which looks like it is being offered for sale in this photo may be the same

quilt that was in the Quilt magazine. So there are two so far.

But then....

Another nine-block, this one pictured in Minnesota Quilts, no information.

Six design elements instead of eight

It's not in my Encyclopedia of Applique where it should be on a page of blocks with eight rotating design elements around a central floral. No swags in there.

UPDATE: I should have looked under six-lobed designs as here is one in the Shelburne Museum's collection:

Nine blocks

A pattern of sorts.

I wonder if anybody has used the Quilt magazine pattern to

make a repro.

Pickle Dish, Bat Wing, Tobacco Leaf or Sawtooth

The DAR Museum has this Alabama quilt in their collection

that looks to date from about 1880 to 1930 when the pattern

was fashionable and the dyes were fugitive.

We'd call it Pickle Dish or Indian Wedding Ring.

The brown was probably once another color.

If there is no information---it's an internet picture

Maybe red...

East Tennessee

A popular color with this design.

From Quiltmaker magazine. Now in the collection

of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum

Mary High Prince, Bedford County, Tennessee

Sarah Crumly Jarrard (1853-1925) White County, Georgia from the

Georgia Quilts book.

Malinda Youree McCrary

Tennessee Project

Red could fade all kinds of ways.

From the Wyoming project. No information.

For the most part the claret or wine-colored reds were colorfast.

The smaller salmon pink triangles were probably once bright red.

Once red?

And teal blue/green?

But the Alabama quilt might once have been green.

An overdyed green that has kept its color

Kathryn Johnson, North Carolina project. The family called it Tobacco Leaf.

Solid greens from synthetic dyes were prone to fade to khaki between

 1880 and 1930 when the pattern was popular.

Tennessee project, Lucy Ann Templeton Johnson.

Their pictures have faded blue over the years but

the notes indicate the fading color as green.

Green?

Mary Pinson, Arizona project. Made in Texas, died in 1892

The points look green here. The whole quilt is

a study in fugitive color.

That synthetic teal blue-green that is so pretty until

it fades, a common fate.

But the Alabama quilt could have been blue

Collection Pinal County Historical Society

Blues from the same time period can fade too

Laura Jones Pressgrove, Tennessee project,  family name was

Bat Wing

Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art

Looking at these quilts from about 1890-1925 one realizes 

how many rules there were about color. There is certainly a

conventionalized style going on here. 

Where are the quilts with chrome orange

as the neutral background or scraps of brown dress prints?

Everybody seemed to understand the color & fabric rules.

Until the rules changed.

Until Kansas City Star designer Eveline Foland

published an "old Virginia pattern" in October, 1931.

She thought the small triangles should be solid colors

and the larger pieces prints.

The reverse of what happened in the late 1920s.

In 1933 "Hope Winslow," a pen name

used by H.H. VerMehren's DesMoines company

gave it the name Indian Wedding Ring.

She advised you to make it in two colors: tan and brick red.

Perhaps she had seen an example like the one at the top of the page.

Did anyone follow Hope's advice in 1933?

Within a year she changed her mind, suggesting "gay-colored prints with

your favorite colored background."

You can call it what you like.

Hope seems to have over romanticized some popular culture

with her Indian Wedding Ring name.

But I am sticking with Pickle Dish.

Mary Ann Brown Barnes's daughter told the Tennessee project this was a Sawtooth.