Arkansas Centennial

 

Joyce's block certainly jumps off the cover of

the new edition of the Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

We asked stitchers to choose a block and send it in. Hers

is #2765 published in the Kansas City Star in  1937

as Arkansas Centennial.

#2765 is an unusual block, all curved seams, a variation of Kaleidoscopes with straight sides

but more challenging.

Arkansas Centennial has a few cousins with eight curved seams meeting in the center.,

See posts on pattern relations here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/10/wheel-of-mystery.html

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/03/kaleidoscope.html

But not many people other than Joyce seem to have attempted this design.

A quick quilt from BlockBase shows a secondary

pattern in the corners.

12" pattern from BlockBase

Arkansas Centennial certainly looks good on the cover.

Thanks, Joyce.

Knockout

How about that for a quilt pattern?

I looked in the corner for the block.

It's a four patch repeated 25 times in the above quilt.

Is that quilt from the early 20th century or the late 19th?

I drew it in EQ8.

It's not in BlockBase (and it won't be in the new

 Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns either, I just discovered the picture.)

It should be somewhere around the low 1400s, Four Patches Miscellaneous Construction,

kind of like Arkansas Traveler at the top.

I gave it a "should be number" 1402.3 right between the H and the T.

You could look at the repeat like this but that's not in

the Encyclopedia either.

Print this sheet out about 8-1/2 x 11"

and there's a pattern for a knockout quilt.

Wheel of Mystery

A complicated graphic but looking at the block it's pretty simple.

A Maltese Cross style block in a bold sashing.

Simple, except for getting 8 seams to meet in the center.

BlockBase #2764

The oldest name is Winding Ways from the Ladies Art Company

or maybe Nashville from Hearth & Home magazine about the same time.

Buttercup from a Grandma Dexter catalog in the 1930s

The design was most popular in this counterchange shading

alternating dark & light blocks. To get the repeat you need to

see it as four blocks.

So it's also in Four-Patches as #1512.

Pink & white from Cindy's Antiques.

The pattern requires some real piecing skill in this four-patch format.

Precise matching of a lot of curved seams...

You could make it a little easier and draw those

side seams as straight lines.

Then it's another number #2709

published in the Star as Ice Cream Cone

Straight sides. Quarter circle curves,

Or just give up the curved seam idea completely and call it a Kaleidoscope... 

with a different number #2704

Parquetry for a Quilt Block

Kansas City Star

See a post here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/03/kaleidoscope.html

A Pitcher of Water

A few weeks ago Ileana down in Texas posted this

unusual pitcher quilt on ebay

1930 -1960, estimated date.

A close relative

perhaps a little older with more triangles.

Not a published pattern.

Meant to look like a glass pitcher with cut or pressed design.

There may be a meaning to the pitcher image that we don't see...

Bayou Bend Collection

Houston, Texas

...symbolizing a pitcher of water, the temperance drink

in contrast to the whiskey jug.

The Orangetown Museum in Rockland County, New York owns an album quilt made for Elizabeth Griffiths in 1852. A poem describes the symbolism in some of the blocks. For this appliqued pitcher:

"Then the one by Mrs. Sarah Haring

Has a flower like the rose of Sharon,

Also a pitcher, let up fill our glass

And let us have the Maine law come to pass."

In a post 8 years ago I wrote: "The Maine Law was a temperance law---I think we can interpret this as a water pitcher symbolizing support for temperance."

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/05/album-quilt-with-key.html

Don't have many pitcher quilts in the picture files and no published patterns.

This string variation from a Lone Star Study Group meeting.

Looks about 1900-1930.