Golden Dahlia x 16

 

A formidable project!

16 blocks each with 72 diamonds made of 2 triangles.

Not in BlockBase+ or my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns and I see why. The unknown maker adapted a larger design meant to cover a whole top and turned it into blocks.

Golden Dahlia from the H.H. VerMehren pattern company in Iowa,

advertised under the name Nancy Lee.

VerMehren in their Colonial Quilts line also did a Giant Dahlia design that was more popular than the Golden Dahlia, but some quiltmakers took up the challenge of the split diamond.

The West Virginia Project recorded this one in a variegated color scheme. 

The idea of an 8-pointed star with a split diamond goes back at least into the 1840s.

Two versions from early Quaker sampler albums....

But the large scale, single block is definitely a VerMehren idea (1933.)

Polly Mello has one or two in her collection of VerMehren quilts.

Is the version with 16 blocks one of a kind?

Ebony Suite: A Plethora of Patterns

https://shop.modafabrics.com/collection?group=Ebony%20Suite

Check out the patterns featuring pre-cuts of my new Morris repro line called Ebony Suite. All neutrals and all drama!

Patterns to purchase now: Denniele Bohannon has designed a rectangular block to make the most of 10" square Layer Cake precuts in These Diamonds Shine. $11.50. 52" x 63".

https://louannamaryquiltdesign.bigcartel.com/product/these-diamonds-shine

https://www.facebook.com/louannamaryquiltdesign

Moda/United Notions is selling patterns. Melissa Corry's Nordic Nights uses the curved Drunkard's Patch unit. Pattern includes 5 sizes of finished quilts.

https://shop.modafabrics.com/product/1513.00002?categoryCode=newProducts

Chrissy Lux's Swift Quilt is all squares and triangles. 64" x 80".

https://shop.modafabrics.com/product/1486.00017

For inspiration go to Electric Quilt's page on a contest they held last month for patterns drawn in EQ that used the Ebony Suite collection. A randomly-drawn winner won a fat quarter bundle of the fabric.

Entries:

By Cheryl

By Deni

By Cath

See more ideas at their page:

https://doyoueq.com/blog/2024/03/eq-design-challenge-giveaway-ebony-suite/

and in a post:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2024/03/ebony-suite-fat-quarter-bundle-design.html

I've had a few ideas. See these posts with patterns:

Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: Perpetual Motion in Black & White

Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: Ebony Suite :::: Best of Morris

And we'll have more.

Becky Collis is finishing the quilting on Denniele's RetroVibe. She and Denniele have been fussy-cutting. More later.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1181299209952784&set=a.778005903615452

Eclipse Pattern: Sunshine & Shadow

 

A Solar Eclipse on April 8th!

We need a quilt pattern to remember the occasion.

Washington Post map

Pieced design finishing to 12"

From BlockBase+

I couldn't find Sunshine and Shadow in Nancy's Chicago Tribune. My attribution may be wrong. For
my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns I used some secondary sources, which may have been wrong. But as the pattern is rather impractical to piece it could be Nancy Cabot (I don't think she ever stitched a seam in her fictional life.)

ECLIPSE ADVICE

Remember not to look directly at the sun.

And Turn off your Solar Lights beforehand. 

(I learned that the hard way in the last eclipse.)

And from Alison Weber's Facebook page, snack suggestion:

Centennial Quilt from Vermont

 

Boy waving a centennial flag

A few years ago the Thomaston Auction house in Thomaston, Maine

sold this pictorial quilt. Although in rough shape it was so unusual the price

was $17,000.

One would guess it's called a Centennial quilt because his flag

 says 1876 but other than that I see nothing Centennial about it. Bridal Quilt

might have been a better name.

The quilt was long owned by a collecting family the Wellses of Vermont

who allowed it to be published in the Magazine Antiques in 

May, 1934 when it was in better shape.

Mrs. Wells may have remembered the Centennial connection.  I did find an 1876 reference to it as a Centennial quilt in the Rutland, Vermont Globe.

September, 1876

The exhibit described was not the giant Philadelphia exhibition but the 6th Annual Otter Creek Valley Fair in East Wallingford, Vermont

Here are the prize winners in their quilt contest. Maybe one of the fancy quilts?

Or maybe it didn't win a prize.

Do note as typical in that Centennial year: charm quilts and log cabin quilts

were popular. And this one is a form of Log Cabin.

Full Blown Tulip

 

One of my favorite patterns, this one offered a few years ago by

Molly at Fourth Corner Quilts.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

They call it "Full Blown Tulip.

Red and green calico blocks alternate with a chintz

pillar print in a blending of two styles---two ways of looking at fabric.

Same pillar print from Winterthur Museum's collection

Julie Silber's inventory. Chintz and calico?

1840s?

https://juliesilberquilts.com/

About 1840 the fashion for large-scale furnishing prints in a busy composition was

replaced by a trend to use smaller scale calico prints. The Full Blown Tulip blocks are

the new idea; the chintz becoming old fashioned. 

Ruth Finley in the 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts called the design

"Full Blown Tulip" with a photo of a Turkey red, green and chrome orange & yellow quilt:

The height of quilt fashion about 1850.

So how old is this rather complex design?

The earliest examples are variations in a quilt dated 1842 & 1843.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Other date-inscribed examples:

1842-1844 Henry Ford Museum

Philadelphia, Bucks County & Chester County names

They call it a Reel Variation.

https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/20593

American Museum of Folk Art

1842-1843, Sarah Morrell

Lisa Erlandson Collection

1844 Sarah A White

Annapolis, Maryland

Michigan State University Collection

1845 Abraham Messler, Somerville, New Jersey

Messler was a minister in the Reformed Dutch Church.

1845 Album Sampler with Donoho & Young family

names, Maryland Historical Society

The dated examples indicate the design came in with the trend for red & green calicos, 1842-1845, later than I would have guessed.

BlockBase+ patterns numbered 36xx

It's a challenge to piece yet many pattern companies offered variations over the years. Some drafted them better than others. Number 3653 had good proportions and is well drawn but if you will notice neither Finley's photo nor the Ladies Art Company's California Rose tells you how to fit it into a block.

Probably some skillful piecers in the 1840s did not fit it into a square block but pieced it into another odd shape. As my computer program is BLOCKBase we fit it into a block---in a circle, but pieced edges might be better.

About 1950 from my collection

Online Auction

I redrew the BlockBase pattern for a 15-inch block.

Print on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet.

In 1929 Ruby Short McKim published a pattern

in the Kansas City Star called Strawberry. She added an extra 

seam in the petals.

BlockBase #3640

McKim's name from a mid-20th-c sampler.

A few years later an Oklahoma reader sent another version to the Star.

A real challenge. BlockBase #3637.

1938 Chicago Tribune version

Variations have many names. I'm not going to count them all. I've always liked Victoria's Crown, another Finley name, although I have no idea how old that name actually is.

Online Auction