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Monday, December 28, 2020

String Pieced Lone Star

 

Polyester String Quilt

I don't know if a pattern has ever been published for this whole top design
 of string-pieced diamonds. But it's a pattern you often come across.

It's one of the new numbers in the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.
I sent the drafters this sketch.


4005.8
Unnamed
Source: Common String Quilt

In this edition I added many designs that are common
but do not (yet) have a published source.

Here's their fix from the page proofs.


Amelia Etta Atkins (1879-1965)
from the Tennessee project & the Quilt Index

Most of these are from online auctions.

 Bertha Virginia Riddick from
the Michigan project & the Quilt Index.

Does it have a name?

Variation, not indexed.

Monday, December 21, 2020

Squares in a Triangle

 

Jane posted this mid-20th-century quilt top in the Facebook group
  Quilts:Vintage & Antique looking for a pattern name.
We were no help.
I did find relatives, however.

The theme is squares in a half-square triangle.
Classified as a two patch with a diagonal seam down the center of the block.
Jane's has six squares.
I found quite a range of dates on the idea, but no published patterns.

1860-1880? top
Three squares

1870-1890?
One square



15 Squares in some prints that look to be about 1910


Same time but 6 squares


10 squares from the mid-20th century
maybe 1960-1980?

Monday, December 14, 2020

Conventional Lily

Quilt from the Kuska Collection at the Thomas County, Kansas
Historical Museum


Hard to date.
Close fancy quilting, post-1880s greens fading to khaki or dun color.


From my Encyclopedia of Applique

Could it be as late as 1928 when Comfort magazine
published a pattern?


Comfort was quite influential in maintaining a small
and rather regional fashion for red and green appliques
into the 20th century.

If it's so "Conventional" how come these are the only two references to the pattern I can find?




Monday, December 7, 2020

Addition to the 3rd Edition

 


Here's an addition in the third edition of my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

Originally, the Encyclopedia was meant to be an index to patterns published and named before 1970 but in the latest edition I added dozens of designs that hadn't been published as far as I could tell, patterns common enough that they NEEDED a number.

Like this one from the Lambertville, New Jersey Historical Society
and the Quilt Index.

 
It's now got a number: #1527.5



Among its published relatives.

It's a variation on the classic Melon Patch or Orange Peel that goes
way back.

The pattern has close relatives of a slightly different construction.

Many early 19th-century quiltmakers used a variation.

From the Connecticut project & the Quilt Index

But the block and seam lines are different.
This is #1519

Here's one way to look at the quilt above from the 1830's.

But that's not the repeat. There are no seams going through
those large squeezed squares.



When you get your new edition you are going to have to write in on page 178 under 1527.5
"See 1519."
And vice versa.
It's always a work in progress.


You don't have to wait for the new BlockBase to get a pattern. Here's one for
a 15" Four Patch.

Early 19th-c quilt from the Nichols family, Newark, New Jersey,
Newark Museum

UPDATE: Laura Lane at the New England Quilt Museum sent a photo of a mini she made from
a Jo Morton pattern.


And I remembered I'd made an appliqued mini too, interpreting a New England quilt in the Spencer Museum collection for an AQSG Quilt Study.