A Bevy of Baskets

Our patchwork group is working on basket blocks this year, one block a month.  The first is Basket of Fruit.

I starting a basket quilt in May last year.  It spent some time in a box on the shelf, as projects do, but it came out at the start of the year and it's progressing well.

I am working on a pieced sashing between the baskets.  The outer border is going to be flying geese.  I need about 120 flying geese blocks and I have 50 so far.

The Malaga quilt has a basket of flowers block.  It has been made with a yellow background instead of white and there are no duplicates in the floral prints.

Basket of flowers is a 5 x 5 block, so my 10 inch finished size was just right.  The pattern is 713 in BlockBase.

The signature on the block is Mrs. Rudberg.  Edna Rudberg was 50 in 1937, a farmer's wife with two children.  Her life was looking very ordinary until I found a new record.  At the age of 85 Edna married for a second time to a 91 year old widowed Russian immigrant Jewish bookbinder. Now that sounds like a story!

The Mystery Block

The next block from the Malaga 1937 quilt is this one.

Not a lot of information.  The pink patches are the backing fabric of the quilt which you can see where the batting is thin. I've never seen fabric fade as completely as this.  

This is the block layout.  There appears to be at least two different fabrics, one is more loosely woven than the other.  The name would have been embroidered on the white fabric.

This is my first guess at how the block looked.  It doesn't look quite right to me, it's too unbalanced.  

This is my second attempt. It looks much nicer, although it doesn't allow for a signature on white.  I think I will put this block in the finished quilt.  My blocks are finished at ten inches, so the corner blocks are cut from three inch strips.  I don't have a name for this block, if you can help please leave a comment.

Minnie Key's census data demonstrates how mobile the American population was (and still is).  In 1920 Minnie and husband Frank were living with Frank's brother's family in Washington.  Minnie was born in Kansas, her father was born in England and her mother was born in Indiana.  Frank and brother Charles were born in Minnesota like their father and their mother was born in Wisconsin.  Charles's wife Enid was also born in Minnesota but her father was born in Germany.  Enid had two children, one born in North Dakota and the second in Minnesota. Two pages of the census include 21 different states as places of birth as well as Ireland, Greece, South America, Holland, Austria and Canada.

Minnie Key was about eight months pregnant with her first child when she made her quilt block; she and Frank had been married for fifteen years.  I think she was focused on things other than quilts.

Nellie Sellar's Bowtie Block

Happy New Year!  The first block for 2014 is a bowtie block.  It is number 3608 in BlockBase, but with the bowties in a ring, rather than meeting in the middle.

It was my intention to focus on the block itself but I have been swept away by Nellie Sellar's story; so you will have to make do with the story instead.

Nellie Lyall was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1890.  Her future husband James Sellar was also born in Scotland.  James and many members of his family emigrated to the USA in the early 1900s and settled in Chicago. In the 1910 census James, brother William and father William were working as plasterers; sisters Joan and Barbara were working as quilt makers!  In 1911 James traveled back to Scotland.  Nellie and James were married on 23 August, 1911 and sailed to New York on the SS Columbia.

Nellie Sellar seems to have traveled quite often between Chicago and Glasgow to visit her family.  Her eldest son James was born in Scotland; Helen, Elsie and George were born in Illinois.  1930s Chicago must have been a cosmopolitan place; the countries of origin on the same census page as the Sellars were Poland, Germany, Canada, Egypt, Ireland, England, Australia and Scotland.  The new question on the census form was 'does the household own a radio set?'  Every household did own one.

George was an afterthought - Nellie was 41 years old when George was born and his siblings were all at high school.  The year after baby George arrived the whole family moved West to Wenatchee, Washington.  Husband James worked as a plasterer but died early at the age of 56.  The children grew up, married, and had their own families.  George did well - he had a bridge named after him.

Senator George Sellar Bridge, Wenatchee

I almost forgot - here is my bowtie block.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

from http://vintageclothinglove.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/vintage-christmas-trees-1930s.html

See you all in 2014, brighter and better than ever!

Hourglass Star

There are a few duplicate blocks in this signature album quilt as you can see. 

The picture shows the top two rows of the quilt, one third of the whole top.  The last block in the first row is another basket of diamonds, like the first block.  

This block is signed by Onie Mead, an unusual name.  It is a variation of the name Anne and (believe it or not) was popular in the late 1800s in the USA. Onie was living with her husband and two sons when the quilt was made; her sister Lorena also made one of the blocks.

On to the next block.  I can't find a name for this pattern so I've called it an hourglass star.  It's a 16 patch block with a centre hourglass, four flying geese and for half triangle squares for the corners.  With my ten inch blocks each patch is 2.5 inches.

Mrs. Herr was Gussie Selina Herr.  Gussie worked occasionally in the fruit packing sheds and lived to 103.

Malaga is about 6.5 miles away from Wenatchee

Weathervane Block

This week's block is the weathervane.  It's a nine patch block.

In Blockbase it is number 1780.

The Malaga ladies had some issues with the block sizes.  Whoever put the blocks together just trimmed them to fit.

Gladys Hill was 45 years old, a farmer's wife with four children at school.  Gladys had a four year university degree.  She probably waited a while to get married, her first child was born when she was 31 years old.

On the 1940s census form her husband Leo had worked 60 hours in the previous week.  The hours worked by Gladys, occupation 'housework', was blank.  Either her hours did not count, or the hours she worked were countless.  Some things never change.

A weathervane block on a McHenry County, Illinois barn.  See http://www.mchsonline.org/quilted_barn_program

Dresden Plate / Aster / Friendship Ring

It would be easiest if each quilt block had one and only one name - but it wouldn't be as much fun!

Nina Elliott Dresden Plate

This block can be called Dresden Plate or Friendship Ring or Aster.  Ruby McKim uses all three names in One Hundred and One Patchwork Patterns.  This Dresden Plate has 16 short petals with rounded ends; McKim's pattern has 20 petals all of different fabrics.  You could buy pre-cuts from the McKim Studios; twenty different prints, all ready cut and sufficient for 20 blocks would cost you $2 in 1927.  Or, you could have a lot of friends and exchange fabrics with them.

Aster flowers

For my pattern I used EQ7's 4 Petal Large Center Dresden Plate.  The center was too large so I reduced it and made the petals longer.  In Blockbase it is 3488a, which has 20 petals and a small centre.  Take your pick.  I machine stitched the petals together, and then hand appliqued the petals to the background and lastly the circle to cover the ends of the petals.

Nina May Elliott was 25 years old in 1937 when she made her block for the Malaga quilt.  She was a school teacher with a three year college degree.  Nina married Merton Love in 1940.  He was twenty years older than Nina and a widower with two children aged 13 and 12.  The witnesses to the wedding ceremony were Nina 's parents.  I wonder what they thought about Nina's choice of husband?

For more information about the Dresden Plate block visit Patterns from History.