QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Friday, May 20, 2022

Drunkard's Path Variations #1

 

An odd setting for a pattern we'd probably call Drunkard's Path.
Rectangles alternated with squares.


Given the name Drunkard's Patchwork in the Ladies' Art Company catalog in the 1890s.

Wilene Smith tells us that they copied it from Farm & Fireside magazine,
where the combination first appeared without a name in 1891.

http://quilthistorytidbits--oldnewlydiscovered.yolasite.com/drunkards-path-and-t-quilts.php


Bought in Virginia, recorded by the North Carolina project
& the Quilt Index.

From online Auctions above & below

It's an interesting way to set a block that has some detail in the corners,
an alternate rectangle.

Only difference between these two is the color of the border.

Obviously the design had some appeal.

I only found one quilt in which she shaded the rectangle as a light.

By Mary Jane Morris Jessup, Whittier, California
Recorded by the Massachusetts project

Mary Jane spent much of her life in Iowa. Her husband Elias died
in Whittier in 1895, about the time the quilt was made.
The family called it Wanderer's Path in the Wilderness.

But I have to tell you the pattern is not in my Encyclopedia of Pieced
Quilt Patterns.

Don't you hate it when you make a mistake?


Read Wilene Smith's Quilt Index essay: 
Drunkard's Path Quilts, T Quilts, and the W. C. T. U. 

I've been entertaining myself with the Drunkard's Path variations in BlockBase+ & EQ and I'll be posting a few pictures every couple of weeks.

1 comment:

  1. The drawing shown as No. 243 only has dark "slices" with white "pies". No dark "pies". All the quilt photos have dark and light "pies". Is 243 an applique pattern to use those extra "slices" cut from the "pies"?

    ReplyDelete