How I Use BlockBase: Exploded Blocks

BlockBase #1850

Monkey Wrench

If you have ever taught anyone to piece you know you have to teach them to organize the block along the seam lines.

BlockBase# 1817b

Bachelor's Puzzle

Sometimes it's easy to see the seam lines and figure out what patchwork units you have to make. You want to avoid all the set-in or Y seams you can.

And you want to avoid things like this...

BlockBase #1879

Bear's Foot

So you begin with easy blocks and most people figure it out pretty quickly.

BlockBase #2796

Wild Goose

But some blocks are trickier than others. This one is not really a Nine-Patch; it's what I called a Nine-X.

I've had students (ages 8 to whatever) who randomly piece things together, winding up with something like the above. So I often make a block diagram with an exploded block. 

Here's a similar block with a simple diagram. I do these exploded blocks with BlockBase. I manipulate the BlockBase picture in my photo program.

First I make a file under My Pictures. You always start picture projects by creating a file so you know where you've saved everything.

I created a file under the name AuntElizasStar. I find the picture in BlockBase using the Wildcard search (I look for Eliza) and save it as a BMP file.

Here's the button in the new edition---a little ninepatch means save as a BMP file.

I've selected the block and then I click on the BMP (bitmap) button.

In the older edition there's a camera icon up there on the top that means the same thing.

I save the block to my AuntElizasStar file.

Then I use my photo program. I use Photoshop but most photo programs can do this. I open my block picture in the photo program.

I make a new empty picture file that's larger than my star block. Here the empty file is 8x10 inches. The block is 5-1/2" inches. The hardest part is learning to select just parts of the block with a mouse. In Photoshop there is a selection tool called the Polygonal Lasso Tool that allows me to select a part of the block and then drop it into the new file. Above I've selected a part of the star block---the patchwork unit.

Here's how I'd piece the block.

I made the background darker so you could see the block parts.

I flattened the images by removing all the layers and saved it in the AuntElizasStar file as a new JPG named How-To.

And then I added a type layer.

"Make 4 of these"

You could add lots of type layers, like "Connect piece A to piece B. Repeat 4 times."

But patchwork is so visual. I think this explains it better than a lot of words.

BlockBase #2777

Grecian Square

Here's a block that could probably use a diagram. Another Nine-X seam line.

BlockBase #4130

Ribbon Border

This is under Miscellaneous. It's really supposed to be a border block.

It definitely would need an exploded block for the novice piecer.

Gray is the New Black

Quilt top from about 1910

 

Gray is hot today---or is it cool?

One hundred years ago it was also fashionable for quilts.

Quilt top from about 1910.

All these pictures from online auction are dated

about the same time.

 

A Modern Quilt

Pretty Square by Denyse Schmidt

 in the Fog colorway

 

The major difference between today's gray quilts and those of a century ago is that solid grays are important now, but the antique tops and quilts are full of gray prints. Solid grays didn't seem to be an option until about 1940.

You often see gray prints combined with shirting prints (white prints with small figures), indigo blues and bright Turkey reds in a color scheme that was a fad for scrappy quilts.

 

Claret, a wine red, was also used with grays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The silver gray prints feature black figures and fine black lines and dots on a white background. They read as gray from a distance.

  

 

The gray prints are so distinctive that they are one of the best clues for dating antique quilts:

 

Black and white prints with fine black lines that appear to be gray are a good clue to a quilt from about 1890-1925.

 

 

In my 1989 book Clues in the Calico I summarized what I had seen in textile history books and mail order catalogs:

 

"The prints were known by several names. Fabric historian Florence Pettit recorded the name Shaker Grays although she notes that there is no record that the Shakers acutally wore them. A catalog from the American Printing Company mill listed them as Silver Grays. The Sears, Marshall Field and Montomery Ward catalogs called them Mourning Prints. Montgomery Ward in the 1889-1890 catalog advertised Half Morning Prints, 'very suitable for elderly ladies not in mourning.' "

 

 

 

The terms Mourning Print and Half-Mourning print are older than this print style, published early to mid-19th century in England and America.

 

This 1864 ad in an English periodical advertises dress for the bereaved including,

"Black Shawls and Mantle Cloths, Mourning Prints and Fancy Dresses, Black and White Ginghams..." (Ginghams might be prints back then too)

 

In the 1840s Harriet Farley writing in the Lowell Offering described a fictional character, a sad, elderly neighbor who wore a woolen gown in winter and in summer, "one of mourning print."

 

So the term definitely predates the gray prints of a century ago. Earlier references might be to black wools and cottons that didn't look like the gray cottons in question here.

 

Quilt top from about 1870-1900

Much of what looks gray is a shirting print,

 a white with black figure.

 

Note the gray with a brown figure in the corner squares.

Quilt collectors also call this gray a mourning print but it's different from the silver grays. It has a blue gray ground with a brown figure and dates from the 1870s.

 

Gray Swatches from my book

Making History: Quilts & Fabric from 1890-1970

 

The Shaker Grays or Mourning Prints from the turn of the century feature a true black and are related to the invention of a good black for cotton that didn't fade or rot the fabric, something you don't see until the 1890s.

 

 

 

I looked through my digital file of date-inscribed quilts looking for the earliest quilt that looked to have the black-based gray prints

 

 

Quilt dated 1887

Here's one from the late 1880s---which seems a little early based on the swatch books and catalog ads I've seen. Perhaps the dated block was done in 1887 and others were added in the 1890s.

Swatch books from the 1890s and the oughts are full of the innovative grays.

 

A block from Mamma, 1898

Perhaps with some first words embroidered.

 

 

Robert & Dollie

Dated 1903-1914

Most of the date-inscribed quilts with gray prints like these date from the first two decades of the 20th century.

Friendship quilt dated 1905

 

The look was so fashionable from friendship quilts that I have pictures of two with the same block, one set with gray squares, the other with gray sashing.

Same block, same color scheme

Dated 1909

1912

1921

 

This one dated 1921 is the latest date-inscribed example I could find. Surviving examples are only a small proportion of quilts actually made. The gray prints were inexpensive and often used for scrappy quilts that were used and used up.

 

 

Which is one reason that most of my examples are

 tops rather than quilted pieces.

 

 

Although I wrote Clues in the Calico over twenty years ago I wouldn't argue today with my old self. When I wrote Making History, which updated Clues a few years ago, I didn't go into mourning prints in any detail as I still felt the information in Clues was accurate. When you see a quilt like the great brickwork quilt above with its silver gray prints--- think 1890-1920.

Both Clues in the Calico and Making History are out of print. You can buy used paper copies on Amazon.com. See the buttons over on the left  (but you have to pay too much for a bound book of  Clues). A better option there is the digital version.

 

 

Morris Apprentice: More Prints & Sources

Grandmother's Choice

For the first block in our sampler to recall the fight for women's rights Becky Brown used "Michaelmas Daisy" from the Morris Apprentice collection for the corner squares.

 

 

It's the small print in the Morris Apprentice Collection from Moda, named for a small flower.

In the States we call these asters and consider them an important part of a fall garden. In England they are also fall bloomers, appearing about the time of Saint Michael's feastday on September 29th. Michaelmas is a milepost in the traditional British calendar.

 

The print comes in ten colorways and will be a great addition to your Morris stash, useful as a foil to all those grander large-scale prints.

The print is classic Henry Dearle, the floral ground covers he used in his tapestries and stained glass windows translated to a small-scale detail. Like its floral namesake, the print makes up in numbers for its tiny size.

Dearle Tapestry from about 1909.

Michaelmas daisies are sometimes seen in the details.

Sketch for a stained glass window.

Drawings for tapestries and windows were called cartoons.

 

 

"Eden", on the other hand, is a splashy large print.

Dearle alternated two images---

one with a ring of rose hips or pomegranates...

the other with a ring of daffodil-like florals.

 

Here's a preview of a future Grandmother's Choice block

by Becky with Eden fussy cut for the center.

 

I imagine Dearle called it "Eden" because of the eastern influence. One big change at Morris & Company design after the former apprentice took over artistic direction was the introduction of formal repeats derived from Islamic art,

 

This Morris & Company carpet design shows the

same flat repeat based on curved lines.

 

 much influenced by the carpet designs that Morris & Company was famous for.

 

1. 

 

"Eden" was designed about 1905. In this early-20th-century catalog of printed fabrics it was offered for 3/10 per yard (36" wide) in one colorway, pink and green on white.

See a piece of the original print at the Victoria and Albert Museum by clicking here:

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O87467/eden-furnishing-fabric-dearle-john-henry/