Stars with Long, Spiky Points

Too bad the blues faded. This early 20th-century-quilt just out of the frame would have

been some quilt. 

The pattern is BlockBase #1623: Sun Rays. I've done a few posts on these spiky stars as a setting pattern rather than a block:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2019/02/stars-in-sashing.html

The blue version above looks like the patterns is in the block set on point.

Here's the block (with the points chopped off)

Not that common

See a post on a variation we call 54-40 Or Fight

Ooops

Only published once??!

Here it is in BlockBase #1623

I gave it an apostrophe as if it belonged to Ray, but it should be Sun Rays Quilt.

I have pictures of the design going back to the 1840s

Block in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

A variation?

I have just a few published patterns in this seam structure,

a nine patch with spiky points. Probably because the star points are harder

to cut than a simple half-square triangle. The block design may have been

adapted from the earlier setting pattern.

Variations as Blocks

Encyclopedia of Pieced  Quilt Patterns

BlockBase

Simple but interesting when set allover.

  

I've never seen a quilt made in BlockBase#1629 Dove at the Window,

printed in the Kansas City Star in 1945.

But this unnamed variation was popular around 1900.

It must have been published.

We'll call it BlockBase #1628

I drew it in EQ8

as a 12" block

25 blocks gives you a 60" square quilt

Cutting a 12" Block

A Cut 4 squares (2 light, 2 dark) 4-7/8". Cut each in half diagonally. You need 8 triangles.

B  Cut 2 squares (1 light, 1 dark) 5-1/8". Cut each into 4 triangles with two diagonal cuts. You need 4 triangles.

For D & C

Alternate with a 12" block with the corners cut off.

And one last variation in an odd top made of glazed solid

color fabrics. Date???

The pattern has many possibilities

If you rotate the HST corners in the pattern you'd get this

look.

Rotating every other block one turn would give you

a complicated all over design.

Another Sash & Block Design with Spiky Points

From the Rocky Mountain Quilt Shop

I showed a version of this star design with the pattern in the sashing and plain white blocks here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2019/02/stars-in-sashing.html

It's BlockBase #1059.5

Robert Bishop pictured an antique version and called it "Eight Pointed Star."

Antique from about 1840-1860 that I used to own.

It's a great pattern to show off some quilting.

The main difference between the two BlockBase numbers is that here the cornerstone is pieced as a square in a square.

The formula:  

Sashing is a rectangle half the size of the plain block.

If the plain white block is 10", the sashing finishes to 5" x 10". The cornerstone is 5".

From a Carlie Sexton pattern booklet in the 1920s:

Sashing for a circular design.

You can extend the star points by making the sashing longer in proportion.

Instead of 10 x 5" draw it 10 x 6".

Two from online auctions

Above and below, no source.

All these red and white examples look to be from the heyday of red and white quilts

1880-1910.

Although I haven't found a published pattern or name before 1970

it seems to have been passed around.

Emma Justine Goehring from the Michigan Project

Two from the Quilt Index

 Mary Larkin Moriarty from the Iowa Project

Hospital Sketches Block #4: Cockscombs & Currants

Hospital Sketches Block #4: Cockscombs & Currants by Marty Webster

This month's free pattern for the Hospital Sketches BOM on my Civil War Quilts blog is Cockscombs and Currants.

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/04/hospital-sketches-4-cockscombs-currants.html

1853 Elizabeth Stark,

Kansas Museum of History

Last month's classic was the Love Apple, a pattern with many variations.

Love Apple from the Virginia project book

The Cockscombs and Currants block, however, seems more cut to a pattern. The center features a circle with 8 radiating leaves or petals (usually red). A bud that fills the corners grows from four green leaves. Four curving stems grow from the circle between the leaves. Currants grow along the stems. The greatest variety is in the number of currants. In sorting through these pictures (I've got many) I see the fabrics are red and green (no pink, no chrome orange) and they are usually solids.

Watercolor of a quilt from the Works Progress Administration

project in the 1930s.

I'm surprised by how consistent the central arrangement is

with that stem fitting between the red leaves.

From the West Virginia project & the Quilt Index

It makes more design sense to me to arrange the stems like

this, growing out of a petal instead of between them.

But this format is the exception.

Block #1 & Block #4, a nice balance

I indexed quite a few in my Encyclopedia of Applique with names like Poinsettia, Oak Leaf, Grapes and Oak Leaf, and Cockscombs and Currants. Comfort magazine published the design as Chestnut Berry and Flowering Almond in the 1920s. In 1860 Elizabeth Nessly Myer described a  "Flowering Almond" quilt in a letter and left a quilt to her descendants much like the pattern here.

Flowering Almond bush

Dated 1852 from the Dixon family.

Indiana project and the Quilt Index

Dated 1853 from Ohio, online auction.

These tend to be from the years 1850-1870 with the earliest date-inscribed example in my files 1852 and two dated 1853.

An exception to the red and green rule

Well I could go on---I have dozens of photos of 19th-century examples...and a few 20th century.

From Cindy's Antique Quilts inventory

Karla Menaugh's interpretation of a 19th century arrangement.

Abiding Joy is in our Cranberry Collection book.

Abiding Joy by Karla Menaugh

90" x 90" Quilted by Lori Kukuk

Bleeding Heart or Violet Blossoms

Four orphan blocks,

a variation of a complicated pattern.

Based on the same structure as the Turkey Tracks in the last post.

BlockBase #2668, Nancy Cabot in the Chicago Tribune called it Violet Blossoms,

The Ladies Art Company--- Bleeding Heart

The center square in a square goes around three times in the BlockBase drawing

But the examples I have only go around twice.

Nettie Freier from the Michigan Project

Two late-20th-century examples from the Quilt Index.

Golda Stone Caudill from the Indiana Project

None of these match my drawing.

Here's a simpler version, but that's not quite it either.

Maybe all these quilts were inspired by Carrie Hall who showed her

block in her book Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America in 1935.

Here's her beautifully pieced block in the Spencer Museum of Art.

Here's a quick quilt of #2668

Modified to Carrie Hall's simpler version.

It would be challenging to piece, But you could just wing it in applique.