Tiny Houses

Sometimes simple is best.

Here's a circa 1910 block with tiny houses.

As we all know, houses can get too big.

Efficient might be better.

I'd never noticed this simple two-patch shaded so it looked like a house.

This could be very useful.

In fact, I have been woefully negligent about the whole pattern.

Here it is shaded to look like an arrow, a quilt from about the same

time from Molly at the Fourth Corner.

Mollie knew where the pattern originated.

Toadstool

A Winner

The Hearth & Home syndicate 1907

STOP THE PRESSES!

It's not in the new Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

and it's too late NOW.

Don't tell Ann and Sara.

As soon as you get your new third edition your are going to have to write in on page 347

under Two Patches Horizontal or Vertical Division

#3206a

Toadstool

A Winner

Hearth & Home, 1907

Then shade it like a house

#3206b

and write in From a quilt about 1910.

Dang!

UPDATE:

Well, now I see it is in the new edition of the Encyclopedia

It's 1718.5 as a nine patch.

Arrowhead from Needlecraft Magazine

Tree Trimming

 

This block was in a quilt offered in a Shenandoah Valley, Virginia auction a few years ago, one block in a sampler (also quirky) that looked to be middle of the 19th century. 

This is the whole quilt bound and everything. It's about 85" across.

Trimmed of two borders???

Here's how you do it. Cut a square. Use some kind of

an arc and draw concentric lines. Slash the fabric as you

sew along those lines. Turn under the edge, stitch down.

Slash the next arc.

Another version.

In a quilt from the collection of the Yakima Washington Museum

Just a block, a willow tree.

Extreme tree trimming. From Ruth Finley's 1929 book.

You slash and then you clip each branch and fold and stitch like

dog teeth applique.

See a post here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/06/another-one-of-kind.html

Tempted to try it? Tree of Temptation.

Arkansas Centennial

 

Joyce's block certainly jumps off the cover of

the new edition of the Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

We asked stitchers to choose a block and send it in. Hers

is #2765 published in the Kansas City Star in  1937

as Arkansas Centennial.

#2765 is an unusual block, all curved seams, a variation of Kaleidoscopes with straight sides

but more challenging.

Arkansas Centennial has a few cousins with eight curved seams meeting in the center.,

See posts on pattern relations here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/10/wheel-of-mystery.html

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/03/kaleidoscope.html

But not many people other than Joyce seem to have attempted this design.

A quick quilt from BlockBase shows a secondary

pattern in the corners.

12" pattern from BlockBase

Arkansas Centennial certainly looks good on the cover.

Thanks, Joyce.

Knockout

How about that for a quilt pattern?

I looked in the corner for the block.

It's a four patch repeated 25 times in the above quilt.

Is that quilt from the early 20th century or the late 19th?

I drew it in EQ8.

It's not in BlockBase (and it won't be in the new

 Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns either, I just discovered the picture.)

It should be somewhere around the low 1400s, Four Patches Miscellaneous Construction,

kind of like Arkansas Traveler at the top.

I gave it a "should be number" 1402.3 right between the H and the T.

You could look at the repeat like this but that's not in

the Encyclopedia either.

Print this sheet out about 8-1/2 x 11"

and there's a pattern for a knockout quilt.

Wheel of Mystery

A complicated graphic but looking at the block it's pretty simple.

A Maltese Cross style block in a bold sashing.

Simple, except for getting 8 seams to meet in the center.

BlockBase #2764

The oldest name is Winding Ways from the Ladies Art Company

or maybe Nashville from Hearth & Home magazine about the same time.

Buttercup from a Grandma Dexter catalog in the 1930s

The design was most popular in this counterchange shading

alternating dark & light blocks. To get the repeat you need to

see it as four blocks.

So it's also in Four-Patches as #1512.

Pink & white from Cindy's Antiques.

The pattern requires some real piecing skill in this four-patch format.

Precise matching of a lot of curved seams...

You could make it a little easier and draw those

side seams as straight lines.

Then it's another number #2709

published in the Star as Ice Cream Cone

Straight sides. Quarter circle curves,

Or just give up the curved seam idea completely and call it a Kaleidoscope... 

with a different number #2704

Parquetry for a Quilt Block

Kansas City Star

See a post here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2020/03/kaleidoscope.html

A Pitcher of Water

A few weeks ago Ileana down in Texas posted this

unusual pitcher quilt on ebay

1930 -1960, estimated date.

A close relative

perhaps a little older with more triangles.

Not a published pattern.

Meant to look like a glass pitcher with cut or pressed design.

There may be a meaning to the pitcher image that we don't see...

Bayou Bend Collection

Houston, Texas

...symbolizing a pitcher of water, the temperance drink

in contrast to the whiskey jug.

The Orangetown Museum in Rockland County, New York owns an album quilt made for Elizabeth Griffiths in 1852. A poem describes the symbolism in some of the blocks. For this appliqued pitcher:

"Then the one by Mrs. Sarah Haring

Has a flower like the rose of Sharon,

Also a pitcher, let up fill our glass

And let us have the Maine law come to pass."

In a post 8 years ago I wrote: "The Maine Law was a temperance law---I think we can interpret this as a water pitcher symbolizing support for temperance."

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/05/album-quilt-with-key.html

Don't have many pitcher quilts in the picture files and no published patterns.

This string variation from a Lone Star Study Group meeting.

Looks about 1900-1930.