Tessellations 6: Quadrilaterals---Oddrilaterals

Sixty Degrees of Tessellation IV

by Carol Gilham Jones

Carol's been exploring tessellated shapes and color.

The shape has 4 sides---it will tessellate or tile.

A different angle

but one piece covers the surface

Carol Gilham Jones, Ginko Leaf

Pieced and Appliqued

It's roughly the same shape as this:

A square divided equally with a line.

The new shape has four sides: Right angle in two corners.

A vintage quilt from about 1950? with a different take on the shape.

It's half a rectangle.

And half are flipped over.

Two make a tumbler, so a tumbler might be an easier shape to work with.

And like a tumbler it can be any proportion

as long it has four sides.

But if you had a good sense of direction and were working on a design wall you could do many things....

Most of which would involve a lot of thinking.

With 4-way mirror-image rotation it's a quilt block.

But it doesn't have a BlockBase file under four-patches where it belongs.

Here's an odd-shaped quadrilateral that was actually published.

Broken Rainbows

BlockBase  #1416 from the Nancy Cabot

column in the Chicago Tribune in 1937

Broken Rainbows by Dianne Anderson,

Tomball, Texas

http://ftp.thequiltshow.com/see-quilts/quilt-gallery/item/11066-broken-rainbows

Rotation in the block. Rotation in the repeat.

An Eagle Quilt for Baltimore's Mayor 1852

Baltimore about 1850

I found this story in an Indiana newspaper.

"Handsome Present.
The Mayor of Baltimore has been presented with a quilt by a lady of that city over seventy years of age---The quilt is entirely her own handiwork and contains in the centre a beautifully finished American eagle, surrounded by stars representing the thirty-one states, the initials of the Presidents of the United States, and the names of the last four Mayors of Baltimore---The four corners are bordered with exquisitely proportioned flowers, which together with the devices described above, are worked in variegated silk. The accomplishment of this tasteful piece of work by such a venerable dame presents an example which should excite the emulation of misses forming the rising generation."

The Evansville, Indiana Daily Journal printed this article July 9, 1852, copying the article from the New Orleans Picayune.

The Mayor of Baltimore mid-1852 was John Hanson Thomas Jerome (c 1816-1863).

John H.T.Jerome

owned a large grocery store.

He and his wife Henrietta Dyer (married in 1837) had at least two daughters:
Sarah Armitage (about 1845- 1906) who married Elmon Allen Shipley (1835-1912) and had at least one  child.
Mary Viginia who married Matthew Kelly Aiken and had 9 children.

The previous four mayors of the city:

1842-1843 Solomon Hillen, Jr.
1843-1844 James O. Law
1844-1848 Jacob G. Davies
1848-1850 Elijah Stansbury

In case you come across a silk eagle quilt with their initials on it.

Of course, the first seventy-plus woman I thought of was Anna Catharine Garnhart (1773-1860).

She would have been about 79 in 1852 and she liked to make eagle quilts.

Three similar Catherine Garnhart eagle quilts in three different museums.

See more about Catherine Garnhart here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/08/anna-catharine-garnhart-by-alden-obrien.html

Three Garnhart eagles....but none is silk.

Baltimore Album Quilts Set 6x7

Baltimore Album Quilt,

 Friends and family of Samuel Williams. 1846- 1847.

 107½ x 119½ inches. 

The Baltimore Museum of Art: 

Gift of Serena O’Laughlen Wagner, BMA 1988.206.

Most Baltimore Album quilts were constructed in groups of 25 blocks in a 5 x 5 grid, but a few ambitious projects included nearly twice as many blocks. The quilt made for Samuel Williams includes 42 blocks. I've found five quilts set as rectangles of 42 blocks, each in six rows of seven blocks.

The Samuel Williams quilt is the frontispiece photo 

in William Rush Dunton's 1945 book, in which he studied

these "Old Quilts." 

Baltimore Album Quilt,

Dorcas Goodman Brashear Harvey, 1856,

 85" x 98"

The Baltimore Museum of Art

Gift of Marion Farrow Noldt, Tulsa, Oklahoma

BMA 2007.353

The  "Ladies of  Prince George's County" also used an applique border but simpler and narrower,

one reason this quilt is about 20 inches smaller than the Williams quilt in both dimensions. 

On the top left a Pineapple? A Bee Hive?

Quilt sold at Freeman Auctions, 1847

from Baltimore and Cecil County

100" x 117"

A little space between each block and the repetition of a feather wreath give a nice balance to this 6x7 example.

Anna Putney Farrington

Collection of the Fenimore Art Museum

Farrington was a New Yorker but this quilt has several Baltimore-like blocks. It's sometimes shown with scallops on all 4 sides---a restoration?

Baltimore Album Quilt made for the Rev. George Roberts,

1847.

Collection of the Museum at Lovely Lane in Baltimore.

We get so interested in the complex blocks such as this basket from the Williams quilt (similar to one at the bottom of the Roberts quilt above) that we tend not to notice the simpler blocks...

From the Roberts quilt (6x7-5)

like these stars with dogtooth appliqued rings around them.

From the Brashear Harvey quilt (6x7)

Another simple block from the Williams quilt:

14 petals of Prussian blue rainbow dress print,

some framed with Turkey red.

If you are keeping an index to Baltimore Album Quilts here are five examples set 6 by 7.

Alice's Scrapbag: Auntie's Fichu

SuznQuilts is making one of her mini Dresden Plate samplers from my Moda collection
Alice's Scrapbag plus Milles Coulores by Three Sisters. See more pictures at her blog post:

https://suznquilts.wordpress.com/tag/alices-scrap-bag-by-barbara-brackman/

"Auntie's Fichu" is the name for a little floret in a regular grid set

in Alice's Scrapbag.

It's a little nosegay or puffy flower found in Alice's Four Patches.

Document print from Alice' quilt

atop the reproduction print from Alice's Scrapbag

Those grid prints or foulards were fashionable for neck wear,

so I named it Auntie's Fichu

Woman in a paisley print fichu,

what we'd call a scarf.

Mid-century necklines required a collar accessory

(or maybe two)

Lace collars were quite the rage.

Ribbons were an alternative

Often a white fichu finished off the outfit.

Fichu from The Ladies' Home Magazine, 1860.

Such elegant fichus are usually finished with a "fall of lace"

1865

New York Public Library

Fiche at the top, fichu at the bottom.

Was it length that made the difference?

Sometimes the fichus were patterned

(or is it a trimmed ribbon)

I imagine Alice's Auntie (probably a great-auntie) to look like this woman

 in her black lace cap, foulard print dress and patterned scarf.

A little touching up the old photo

Alice's original quilt shows how eye-catching those foulard-style

prints were. The original is the spotty print that jumps out at you. We toned down the contrast a bit.

A compromise between their taste for spots and ours.