Cobwebs & Diamonds

From the Indiana Project & the Quilt Index

Last week I showed variations of this complicated pattern pieced of triangles we call flying geese. The combination of sashing and block gives an interesting all over design.

I also showed this block view of a similar design without sashing.

BlockBase #3842, The Spider Web

I noticed several related patterns that were published as block views. Instead of triangular geese

the strips are full of parallelograms (not really diamonds.)

Eveline Foland's Christmas Star for the Kansas City Star in 1932 might be the best example. She showed an octagonal block and to avoid questions of repeat suggested readers make one block as a sofa pillow.

It's BlockBase #3791 and related to several other octagonal designs.

You can right click on a block and make a Quick Quilt to see what the repeat would be.

BlockBase #3789

BlockBase #3791

These are cool but the block just doesn't give you

the cobweb kind of repeat.

I imported the BlockBase patterns into EQ to recolor and set them in different ways.

Here's Foland's Christmas Star as a square block repeated.

The shading makes it closer to the cobweb effect.

What if you just pieced octagons and set them together?

Oops. I always forget that octagons won't tessellate. There is a

square hole there.

What if....

I added sashing of the same size strips in Photoshop.

The sash is about 1/4 of the width of the block.

That is very cool if you like piecing parallelograms.

You could probably shade that another way and get the cobweb

effect.

And this is why I never get any sewing done. Too much thinking about

potential projects. I'd rather draw parallelograms than sew them.

Tangled Cobweb

Lots going on in this quilt from the mid-20th century.

The pattern is hard to figure out.

Here are the blocks but the sashing is just as important.

Here it is in BlockBase as a Sash & Block design

Both sashing and block are pieced.

It's 1072 & 1074. Why it has two numbers I cannot say.

Two names published in the early 1930s:

Tangled Cobwebs from Hubert Ver Mehren's Home Art catalogs

and Spider Web from Mrs Danner.

Hard to date....

One would assume the geese in sash and block are the same size.

These three, which might be a little older than the 1930s, are not quite the same.

 More going on in the star.

Chrome orange and green by Florence Garvey,

found in the Illinois Project.

And this Welsh example from Mary Jenkins's

Little Welsh Quilts blog is just a block.

No sash.

making it a variation of #3842 Spider Web

from the Kansas City Star in 1942

More blocks without sash.

And then there's this variation, a string quilt---very mysterious construction

An octagonal block with an octagon in the center

plus pieced sash?

Tangled indeed.

Sawtooth

The Prairie Farmer is one of the earliest American periodicals to print quilt pattern pictures on a regular basis. Here's the Saw Tooth Bed Quilt sent in by Mrs. Reed in 1886.

She says:

"It is a recreation to me to piece bed-quilts, and so I have brought to-day a pattern that is very easy to both cut and join. The body of the center square is 9 inches...Two colors are prettiest for this pattern, as red or green for the centers of the blocks and the corners filled in with white, but other colors may be more convenient."

She's drawn a square in two corners and half-square triangles in the other. The pattern doesn't have a BlockBase number but I'm writing it in as 2050.3---Saw Tooth-Prairie Farmer 1886


The name was in the air. In 1885 Etta Richardson won a prize at a Maryland fair with her "saw tooth quilt."

Ileana had this one for sale on eBay---same color scheme different corners.

Of course there are many similar blocks.

Putting triangles in all the corners is a common variation.

The number of HST's along the side is also a variation.

Same block, on point with California gold print sashing.

I love this block and all its variations so have saved lots of photos.

Square only in the corners 4 across

As far as date: Everything above looks to be about 1870-1890.

This one is older; in fact it is dated 1843

From the Ohio Quilt Project book Quilts in Community, 

Our Sunflower Pattern Co-operative made a quilt inspired by that 

Ohio quilt   for a Kansas museum dedicated

to John Brown, the radical antislavery activist. 

Sashing makes this easier as you don't have to line up

all those points where the triangles meet.

Polka dots always a good idea. This one seems to

have been started in the 1870s and finished in the teens or later.

You can go on and on. Ileana also had this mid-19th century version for sale.

12 HST's across.

Each about an inch.

I'd guess this one was probably contructed with the white blocks a plain square

and the sashing the patchwork. Pairs of strips set between the blocks. That's the way

I'd sew it (except I am NOT going to even think about it.)

A more common variation halves the center square into two triangles.

Last quarter-19th c

Lend & Borrow by Mark Lauer

Lend & Borrow is the February block in the

Antebellum Album sampler over on my Civil War Quilts blog.

See earlier versions here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/02/antebellum-album-2-lend-borrow.html

Here's Wendy working on her pink and brown version

of the John Brown bedquilt.

See the pattern with a couple of ideas for the John Brown Bedquilt

in our Etsy shop.

You can buy it as a PDF for $5:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/599696809/

Or as a paper pattern through the mail for $8:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/585904628

Pudding & Pie---Jelly & Jam

I've been looking for a name and source for this pattern for a while.

As the blogger at Starwood Quilter noted

It is not in BlockBase.

So I had no name and no number but a lot of photos of quilts from about 1950.

It should be in BlockBase and my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns as a 

Miscellaneous Four Patch (page 185)

But it's not.

It was driving me nuts. How to find it?

Then I thought about 

Crowd Sourcing

So I posted some photos on a Facebook group of quilt historians and within seconds Joan told me she'd seen it as Pudding & Pie.

We figured out it was published by the Alice Brooks syndicated newspaper column, probably in the 1940s.

Merikay found a copy of the clipping from 1939.

"A Clever Change-About Design

Pudding & Pie"

I could have crowd-sourced the information in my stitch group as Carol tells me she has this book...

Tessellations by Jackie Robinson who calls it Tessellated Star.

 I added a sketch to my copy of the Encyclopedia as #1406.5.

It's such a clever pattern and easy enough. 

Most of the time.

That's a 45 degree angle.

The rectangles finished to 2" x 6" so cut them 2-1/2" x 6-1/2"

I drew it in EQ as a 12 inch block. You could use 2-1/2" precuts for

the strips. 49 blocks = and 84" square quilt.

If you shade it counterchange fashion (one block is the reverse of the other) 

and alternate the blocks

It would look like the version that Starwood Quilter did at the top of the page.

Since it's pieced from JellyRolls how about Jelly & Jam?

I feel better. The pattern has a name and number. Thanks to the crowd.