Tessellations: Hexagons 1 Random shading, stripes & waves

Just hexagons, no shading pattern

BlockBase #160a

In trying to find a quilt for every pattern BlockBase I got fixated in the hexagons. There are so many things you can do with them. We will begin with the simplest. They are all the same quilt, just shaded differently, and they are all BlockBase #160. 

The first is hit or miss---No repetitive shading pattern....

Published names from Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns

Hexagon

Honeycomb

Mosaic

Century 

Poor Boy

Hit or Miss

#160a From about 1880-1900

Random shading

Hexagon quilts with no plan tend to be

the utilitarian versions, like the early 20th-century tied comforter above

or polyester double-knit below.

Below BlockBase#160b--shaded in stripes

Mid-19th century

Godey's Lady's Book showed this shaded stripe in 1850 but didn't give it a name.

Quilt dated 1877 with the name pieced in:

"Honeycomb Centre"

About 1900

Farm and Home magazine called it Variegated Hexagons about 1890

About 1870-1890

About 1910 above and below

Date inscribed 1821, Emeline D Ellery.

This early strip quilt in the collection of Historic Deerfield

has alternating strips of rosettes and stripes. See more here:

http://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?museum=&t=objects&type=ext&f=&s=&record=30&description=quilt

More about rosettes later.

Two years ago Mary Kerr organized a show of hexagon quilts at the Paducah Rotary Show with this one from Dana Balsamo's collection that has a lot in common with the 1821 Ellery quilt.

160c Ocean Wave, about 1890

The strips of light and dark could wobble back and forth.

British author Averil Colby called this undulating arrangement 

Ocean Wave.

Rayons-mid-20th-century

From East Tennessee, early 20th century?

Case Antiques

A couple of decades later, same idea.

Hex on the Beach, a recent quilt

by Tula Pink.

Colby showed a few of these shaded patterns she called Ocean Wave but not many Americans tried it.

Yet.