Friendship Knot

Here's a knotty problem Dawn Fox Cooper and I have been working on for a while (she's been working on it a lot harder than I have). We have been in the dark as to the source of this particular quilt design.

Here's the block.

This one is a four patch with the center cut into four pieces

In most the white center is one piece

Mary Heater Childers (1904-2003) Braxton County, West Virginia

WV project & the Quilt Index

Dawn has 23 pictures of quilts in the pattern. There must have been a commercial source. They are so much alike. She writes:

"They all appear to be of the time period 1920-50 from the fabrics. [The pictures] have been found mainly in the US & Canadian Documentation Projects or for sale on line. Names include many Single Wedding Rings, but also Wedding Ring, Ribbon & Rings, Rings & Bows (the 2 in the University of Alberta), Friendship Knot, & Engagement Ring."

Eleven of the 23 include the makers' location, one each from Connecticut, Nebraska, Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina & Ohio and six from West Virginia.

Essie Knicely Fluharty (1894-1980) Marion County, West Virginia
WV project & the Quilt Index

There are several patterns indexed in BlockBase

that are similar but none just like this one.

What makes it odd is that those diamond-shaped pieces repeat as a unit of two

rather than four.

This one is attributed to Mary Holmes Fisk of St.

Lawrence County, New York. (Note to Dawn: Add this one.)

The far more common variation with four green diamonds.

This one has a BlockBase number.

4047 Friendship Knot or Friendship Wreath

(not the most accurate drawing but you get the picture).

From the West Virginia project

Says Dawn: "I find it interesting to see such a small area & time frame for this pattern & hope that your history page may shed more light on this subject." I'm glad she has so much faith in me.

Well, I was finally able to help her. It's that darn Alice Brooks. (See a post here: https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2020/01/alice-brooks-darn-her.html  )

I've been going through Newspapers.com looking for Alice Brooks designs I missed in the first editions of BlockBase and my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. And here it is.

The block. 

I drew in a few lines. There are three wedges in the arc

just like in the examples Dawn's found.

The Alice Brooks patterns were distributed from the early 1930s till the '80s by King Features. They used a lot of bylines. Alice was secondary to the main signature of Laura Wheeler---both fictional characters. Alice's patterns were printed in fewer newspapers. The one above I found in the Boston Globe in 1936 and again in 1939. Also in US papers from Minneapolis to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Sacramento in June and July, 1936. And in three Canadian papers, the Vancouver (Canada) Sun in 1939, the Winnipeg Tribune in 1938 and in Saskatoon.

I was hoping to find a West Virginia paper as the source for the craze in that state, but no luck so far.

Dawn made her own Friendship Knot.

The pattern is going in the new edition of BlockBase as #4047.5 in the Miscellaneous category.

Friendship Knot

Strange Vegetation?

From an online auction. By the fabrics, which offer some clues to date--- 1840-1890. The madder red print isn't much help but you don't see that overdyed green after 1890 or so.

The pattern???

A four-patch with quarters that are not equal sized.

BlockBase has several of these Unequal Four Patches but not this one.

Some kind of unknown vegetation?

So just as I am wrapping up this short post I realize the block in the picture is upside down.

It's not that strange after all.

The white strip is the stem.

Not that strange, except in coloring.

Snakes Again

Snakes

By Lucy Young Mingo (1931-) Boykin, Alabama (Gee's Bend)

About 1970

Museum at Michigan State University Collection

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-2994

Lucy who has quilted with the Gee's Bend Cooperative

with one of her Pine Burr quilts.

Lucy's pattern is a popular design that was published in the Kansas City Star 

as Rainbow, sent in by Ida Best of Locust Grove, Oklahoma

It's BlockBase #3350

I think I made an error here though in

giving it the name Drunkard's Trail, another KCS pattern.

It's the same structure but now I see that Drunkard's

Trail is supposed to be a string quilt.

Like this one from Pepper Cory's collection.

I doubt the many versions in the photo files had anything to do with the Kansas City

Star. The pattern with it's two unpieced arcs was probably handed around.

From Laura Fisher's inventory

And it would seem it wasn't really popular until the 1950s.

The pictures I have don't look 1940s or earlier.

Susie Ponds's quilt on the cover of Maude Southwell Wahlman's

Signs & Symbols was made in 1979.

Green Snake Quilt, Susie Ponds, 1979

It may very well be a phenomenon of the 1960s & '70s.

Julie Silber's inventory

With this possible exception--- a crazy quilt/fan.

An accurate pattern must have been valued as you can draw it all wrong

as I did in BlockBase. The curves have to be just right to bend back upon each other.

Here's a better pattern. 

Or use InkLingo on your computer to print patterns.

https://lindafranz.com/blog/drunkards-trail-quilts-with-inklingo/

Or buy templates

http://www.quilttemplates.com/favoritequilts3.html

Fancy Applique x 3

In 1932 the B.C. Taber store in Norwalk Ohio had a big quilt show,

quilts on all three floors.

The store about 1890

 Bet  you wish you were there, if only to examine this unusual quilt in the foreground

Below, a twin 

A nine-block applique from the mid-19th century o

n the cover of Quilt magazine in Fall 1989

They didn't tell you much about the quilt they called Compass Rose

 inside but they did give a pattern. You can't see much of the vine border.

I thought they might be the same quilt but the one shown in 1932 has more layers in the central floral.

However, one can imagine that the quiltmakers were neighbors.

And then there's a third

But this one, which looks like it is being offered for sale in this photo may be the same

quilt that was in the Quilt magazine. So there are two so far.

But then....

Another nine-block, this one pictured in Minnesota Quilts, no information.

Six design elements instead of eight

It's not in my Encyclopedia of Applique where it should be on a page of blocks with eight rotating design elements around a central floral. No swags in there.

UPDATE: I should have looked under six-lobed designs as here is one in the Shelburne Museum's collection:

Nine blocks

A pattern of sorts.

I wonder if anybody has used the Quilt magazine pattern to

make a repro.