QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Thursday, February 14, 2019

Friendship Knot of Mystery

An interesting if miscellaneous quilt pattern.
This top from an online auction.

Here's the block.
Diamonds with a wedding ring like curve.

It's a variation of this one.

BlockBase #4047

A complex repeat (and complex piecing)

BlockBase tells me the pattern was published under two
different names in the mid-20th century.
Friendship Knot from the Laura Wheeler/Alice Brooks syndicate
and Friendship Wreath from Lockport Batting.

From Mary Koval's inventory

Despite the complexity many stitchers tackled it.

Project & the Quilt Index.

The block forms half a star with 4 diamonds. The lower
star points extend into wedding ring curves---4 pieces per durve.

Probably inspired by the Hands All Around antique
that Ruth Finley showed in her 1929 book.

Hands All Around variation
 BlockBase #4044 from the Arizona Project & the Quilt Index.
See a post about the older design #4044 here:

I'd say the version at the top of the page was someone's individual drawing
(3 shapes per arc; 2 diamonds instead of 4)

Except I have more photos of the variation with 2 diamonds than the Laura Wheeler design

I'm going to have to number this one BlockBase #4047.5

Jesse Earl Childers from the West Virginia
Project & the Quilt Index.

Again from the West Virginia project.

My BlockBase drawing for #4047 isn't that accurate so I am not going to give you a pattern.
But there are plenty of patterns for the design with 4 diamonds out there on the internet.

From a Field Guide to Quilts

Mary Holmes Fisk, St. Lawrence County, NY
The mystery design---
Has anyone ever seen it published before 1970.
It must have been!

3 comments:

  1. 'Long ago' I picked up a bag of cut pieces for a few of these blocks from the guild bargain table. It took me a while to figure out how they should be assembled -- I kept trying for Wedding Ring. Included were vintage (original) parts, a few repro pieces, and some more modern tone-on-tone background sections. Eventually I finally got everything together and hand quilted into a small quilt. I call it Hand-Me-Down, because I was at least the third person to work with those vintage pieces.

    http://spiralj2.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-ufo-challenge.html

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  2. Page 138 Texas Quilts Texas Treasures published by the Texas Heritage Quilt Society
    has a photo of a Friendship Knot or Starry Crown c.19140 75"x88" made by Ada Ruth Calfee,
    Montgomery, Texas: Owners: Dana and Charles Johnson

    The Best of Robert Callaham Volume 1 published by the McCall Quilting Company has the pattern on page 5. Callaham states the Friendship Knot appeared in a 1930s newspaper, where the reader was instructed to send 10 cents to the Household Arts Department for templates and instructions.

    In early 2000 I made this quilt with Ardco Templates the Robert Callahams pattern and 40s reproductions. It is hand quilted with a fleur di lis over each block.
    The pattern is not constructed as a wedding ring, but as 4 units per block. 25 Blocks made the quilt.

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  3. https://moderndiary.blogspot.com/2009/06/quilt-history-butterfly-block.html From this diary telling me of their publications of 1942(Replicas of Quilts Old and New) and 1944(Anne Orr) I googled Lockport Quilting Patterns and got the pattern for Friendship Wreath now located on Pinterest. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a9/84/3e/a9843e046968f950f65480a41e09c5dc.jpg I am assuming it is from the 1942 publication though I did not see indication of that on the page. I hope it opens for you, but you too can google if not. I just figured out these patterns are available on the blog Q is for Quilter for download.

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