Wreath Blocks from Hospital Sketches

Periwinkle Wreath, Hospital Sketches 

Janet Perkins

We've started a new applique Civil War Block of the Month pattern over at my Civil War Quilts blog. Last Wednesday's post gave the pattern for the first block in Hospital Sketches: A wreath named for Louisa May Alcott, Periwinkle Wreath (her early pen name was Tribulation Perikwinkle).

See the post about LMA and the pattern here:
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2019/01/hospital-sketches-1-periwinkle-wreath.html

Becky Brown and I designed the applique as a joint project. The Hospital Sketches blocks are based on the most popular designs seen in Civil-War-era albums and this circular pattern is certainly one of the top ten. We modified the traditional design by basing the floral on a five-lobed periwinkle.

Antique block pictured in a Spool Cotton catalog from the 1940s,

 probably from Florence Peto's collection

I looked at a lot of wreaths and found the most typical structure features four florals at the north/south axes, with leaves and/or buds in the corners. Fits nicely in a square block.

You don't often see the flowers in the corners,

Here's a 20th-century pattern.

Really doesn't fill the block as well.

1945 pattern called Colonial Tile Quilt from

Chatelaine magazine.

Now that fills a block!

Becky teaches a class in how to make traditional applique your own design

so she filled some empty space here beautifully.

A vintage sampler ---all wreaths.

The Hospital Sketches applique is all about addition and subtraction.

Becky adds, but you could subtract.

Dated 1852, from Molly at Fourth Corner Antiques

Toss those buds and just do five leaves in each corner

Marie Webster called it Conventional Rose Wreath in 1915

Or three leaves. Isn't modernism all about minimalism?

Applied geometry, a wonderfully orderly version recorded by

the Massachusetts project and the Quilt Index.

So how old is the appliqued wreath design?

I have several photos from the earliest album samplers with

dates from 1842 - 1844.

A wreath of leaves is the center feature of this 1844 signature quilt from Medford, New Jersey that was in my dear friend Louise Townsend's collection, now in the Briscoe Collection at the University of Texas.

Quilt from the Fish Family, D.A.R. Museum,

dated 1843

The conventional applique wreaths were possibly inspired by the fashion for cut-out chintz wreaths that flourished in the area about the same time.

Classic from an 1845 Baltimore album style sampler,

auctioned at Jeffrey Evans a few years ago.

Sarah Christiann Rauch, Greencastle, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, 1849

Collection of Colonial Williamsburg

The flowers are on the north/south points in the blocks,

which are set on point.

Greencastle is on the Pennsylvania/Maryland border.

http://emuseum.history.org/view/objects/asitem/classification@55/6/title-asc;jsessionid=3B65FB347BC896D6162F062B5F768D59?t:state:flow=a5fb2cf0-d75c-4dad-8164-abccda57e593

Mary J Champlin's, seen above, is one of the earliest block repeats--- 1852..

Her place name Plymouth (Illinois, Indiana ....?)

Add and subtract.

Butterfly from Laura Wheeler/Alice Brooks

Kelly Cline is quilting an old top and was curious about the pattern.

She found it in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns

#929 Butterfly from the Laura Wheeler/Alice Brooks syndicated column.

Their pattern is all pieced with embroidered antennae.

Kelly's is missing the antennae. Here's where the seam lines

seem to be. 

Top by Savannah Adkins, documented in the Arizona Project,

photo from the Quilt Index. She embroidered antennae over 

the seam lines.

It's a clever pattern, making use of the fashion for fans and wedding ring arcs in the 1930s and '40s. But hard enough to piece that you don't see that many of them.

From the New York project

There are a lot of butterfly quilts in the Quilt Index files

but this one is rare.

I found a few in online auctions

UPDATE: Laura Lane at the New England Quilt Museum reminded

me of their cover quilt:

Here's one in the warm side of the spectrum from an online auction.

The quiltmaker took the easy way out and appliqued the pieced butterflies.

With black embroidery thread.

Same solution; different species.

Note tail antennae

It's popular today, however. You can find patterns on the internet.

This one from Leila who added a seam to the bug body.

So, there you go, Kelly.

Sunbeam

Here's a terrific mid-20th-century quilt top

The pattern: Sunbeam from Ruby Short McKim

McKim published this design twice.

It's #2620 in BlockBase

She suggested a pillow or a quilt with alternate plain white

blocks in the Kansas City Star in 1929

And included it in her sampler called the Patchwork Quilt

in the Denver Post in 1931

The McKim sampler was a popular design; here's one from

Cindy's Antique Quilts.

And I've got pictures of  a few repeat block quilts and tops in the

 pattern from online auctions.

This beautifully pieced block is in the colors McKim suggested.

A sampler of color combinations

This block caught my eye. It's a two-color version and the

alternate white spokes fade into the corner pieces.

An asterisk.

I erased some seam lines.

Hmmmm.

The Chicago Tribune's Nancy Cabot column published a slightly different

 version in 1933 with the center square a little smaller. You can find a pattern here:

http://nancycabotsewalong.blogspot.com/2013/12/sunbeam-quilt-block.html

Nancy Cabot also called it Whippoorwill.

And read more about the Ruby McKim sampler at this post:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/02/ruby-mckim-in-denver-post.html