Cloud of Quilt Patterns

Monday, August 15, 2016

Golden Wedding Ring BlockBase #313

Mandy sent me this photo of a Golden Wedding Ring quilt in the collection of the Museum of American Folk Art, a gift of Robert Bishop who was the authority on wedding ring quilts.

She wanted to know more about the pattern. It's a fairly easy pattern to document as it's what I call a "designer pattern" rather than a traditional pattern, meaning a 20th- (or 21st-) century artist drew it and published it. No one made quilts in the design before the 1930s.

Here's an example I found online by Geneva Rankin Snowes, probably done in the 1970s.

It's #313 in BlockBase, designed by the Iowan Hubert VerMehren in the early 1930s.

VerMehren was quite a draftsman and he took

the plain old Double Wedding Ring and made it more complex.

Two for sale online a while ago

1950s-70s?

You can see there is some variation in the proportions.

Well, I know the next question is going to be:

Where can I get a pattern?

Not from me. I can't draw that well and the evidence is in BlockBase.

I wouldn't use that particular pattern.

But here is why the internet is so great.

Corrine at MustLoveQuilts is making one and she talked about her search for a pattern.

She found it in Georgia Bonesteel's book/package/club

Spinning Spools, published in the early 1990s.

https://mustlovequilts.com/2015/02/02/hand-piecing-madness/

Golden Wedding Ring from Spinning Spools Frills and Finery #6

And here's why books are so great: Spinning Spools included plastic templates. And it's still around although long out of print.

Now all you have to do is find that pattern in the right notebook (there are 3). I bet somebody in your guild has it.

Mandy found templates for a variation for sale in Australia.

http://www.ozquilts.com.au/ez-quilting-golden-wedding-patchwork-template-set.html

See the comments where we find that "The pattern was also published in Oxmoor House's Great American Quilts 1991 (Sandra O'Brien, ed.) pp. 82-85," which is very inexpensive in the used book market. Thanks, commenters.

I've seen references to the pattern lately as

"Triple Wedding Ring," but that smacks of a menage a trois,

which historically has not been proven to make anyone happy.

I think Golden Wedding Ring is preferred.

Here's a relative, but a different pattern.

with alas no BlockBase number.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Encyclopedia of Applique #9.79 Unnamed Design

Repeat block quilt. The strip border, simple quiilting

and fugitive greens indicate a date after 1870.

The center is a fleur-de-lis variation.

The symmetry is a 4-way rotation---a design with 4 arms---

design elements on the diagonal.

Here are two similar blocks from my Encyclopedia of Applique.

#9.78 and #9.79. They were never published as patterns before

1970 so they have no "names." My sources were album quilts from the 1850s.

#9.78 looks like pineapples rather than a leaf.

Here's an album from about 1850 that recently sold with one of the block in each corner.

Print this picture 8" for a pattern.

Similar but with reverse applique...

taken from an album that looks to be Baltimore-style, ca 1850.

Repeat block quilt from about 1850 pictured in the Cumberland County Pennsylvania book.

The quilt is in the Texas Quilt Museum but it seems to have been found in

Cumberland County.

These patterns interest me because they were popular once and then disappeared from quilters' repertoire. Did it have a name? Was it a regional favorite?

You also see the leaf and center with an added motif on the north/south lines

as in this pair with a tulip that Bill Volkening showed on his blog.

But the last pair should have a different ID number because the block has a 4 + 4 layout (designs on the diagonal and the horizontal/vertical lines). Unfortunately it's not in the Encyclopedia.

Will it catch on again?

Monday, August 1, 2016

Blocks That Are Not Square: Triangular Blocks

Quilters working towards the end of the 19th century followed a

fashion for triangular blocks.

Variations were given names in print at the time and later.

This one pieced of 9 triangles is BlockBase #201, published as the Pyramid or Sugar Loaf about 30 years ago. It doesn't matter what shape the triangle is as long as it's the same triangle.

Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil

"Sugarloaf" to us tends to mean a landscape feature, a ski hill for example. Those cone-shaped hills were named for their resemblance to the common packaging of sugar, which was molded into a cone for shipping and sale.

Sugar molding

Four equilateral triangles in the classic red and blue

color scheme from about 1900.

Looks a little older with more brown.

An early version with 9 triangles, perhaps

1840-1870. From Cindy Adams collection.

Same block---different set, about 1900.

Too bad about that blue green being so fugitive: about 1900

One can keep adding triangles.....

Collection: Shwenkfelder Library

Here's one by Annie Dorothea Walker documented in the Texas project,

from the Quilt Index. Apparently Annie had a hard

time thinking outside the square block.

Two triangles make a diamond.

And most of us call this triangle pieced of diamonds Sugar Loaf today.

It's BlockBase #204. Published names:

Sugar Loaf

Flat Iron

Arrowheads

Cabot says:

"The old fashioned reliable flat-iron furnished the inspiration for today's quilt pattern, just as many other homely household articles have been represented in our early American examples of quilting. So numerous are the quilts of this pattern it has been impossible to trace its origin."