Oklahoma Rainbows and Snakes

 

Quilt from the 1950-1970 years by Lillie Justus Story of

Valliant, Oklahoma.

 Buckboard Quilts in Oklahoma City 

I included this pattern in the 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia using Lillie's quilt as an example. (#1505.5) The design has many cousins but I could not find a published version with the double arcs making a ring.

Buy this quilt from Judy Howard at Oklahoma City's buckboard Antiques

https://www.buckboardquilts.com/images/6904%20depr%20snowball.jpg

Bonnie over at the QuiltHistorySouth Facebook group found one published in Better Homes and Gardens's book Grandma’s Best Blocks from 2002.

 But there has to be an earlier source. 

Variations on this design have been driving me crazy. How to classify them?  I realize now what the problem is. 

#3350 & Relatives

I've been looking in the wrong place---four patches.  Here is where to find the pattern and its sources in BlockBase (and the Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.) I saw this (40 years ago) as a double fan,
a rather obscure category. The block is usually published in this single repeat but Lillie above turned that repeat into a four-patch.

  

The Rainbow Quilt (Date?)

As you can see in the Encyclopedia the Kansas City Star

published this pattern at least three times.

Drunkard's Trail in 1942

"This wavering design comes from [Arkansas reader]."

Pattern tells you to piece most of it in strings.

And people did.

From Julie Silber's Inventory, looks 1940s-50s

Spearheads & Quarter Circles, Kansas City Star, June 1956

Don't have a photo of this clipping.

The Star did not tell you to set it as a four-patch to make circles. And many people set it side by side.

Many people in Oklahoma.

Like a woman with the wonderful name of Arizona Sullivan,

according to the label on an Oklahoma quilt top sold on EBay a few years ago.

Closeups look like she used feedsacks for her backgrounds.

 The Star, published in Missouri, had a subsidiary newspaper focused on agriculture, the Weekly Star Farmer with an Oklahoma edition and that seems to be the link that connects these quilts.

From Northeast Oklahoma on an online auction

So in your new copy of the Encyclopedia go to #505.5 on page 176 and write in:

See #3350.

And on page 362 under #3350 write: See #1505.5.

See more confusion at these posts:

http://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/10/gypsy-trail-or-snake-in-hollow.html

http://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/01/snakes-again.html

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.

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?

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?

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.

Path o' Gizzards

 

Texas Etsy dealer Shelby Anderson had this striking red and white quilt for sale at Shelby's Quilts.

It looks to be early-20th century or maybe late-19th by the prints---not much

to go on here. Is it pieced or appliqued?

Figuring out the repeat:

Here's the basic unit

set alternately dark on light and light on dark,

counterchange shading.

Shelby has called it a Drunkard's Path but it's not; it's more a Hearts & Gizzards

design. #1503 in the Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

A post with relatives:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/02/hearts-and-gizzards.html