Regional Pattern: Railroad Crossing

Here's a great Ohio invention:

The Railroad Crossing quilt

A small community of Amish quiltmakers who lived in Holmes County at the end of the 19th

century started piecing their solid color scraps into triangles.

Holstein Collection at International Quilt 

Study Center & Museum

2003.003.0285

And pieced those into bigger triangles.

About 1920, Holmes County, Ohio

Date inscribed 1921 L.J.H.

A star, some sashing---

a masterpiece.

Even if some of the color faded.

Darwin says NOT faded.

The earliest I have seen the pattern and the name published was in Quilters Newsletter in 1977.

I saw it as an octagonal block fit into a square and gave it a number in the octagonal blocks,

BlockBase #299.4

Here's a variation with a pinwheel in the center. Same magazine

but a square block. #2932.

1928, Christina Yoder Schlaabach

Perhaps this is the one I indexed.

Now in the Faith & Stephen Brown collection.

Or maybe this one. Both the pinwheels have been in Darwin Bearley's inventory.

Darwin still has a shop in Akron.

He says he still owns all of these and they are pictured in his book

Antique Ohio Amish Quilts. He also says:

"I've always thought this pattern was developed by the Ohio Amish as I never saw another one that wasn't Ohio Amish."

He is the authority.

A 20th-century version with a small nine patch instead of a star or pinwheel.

Signed and dated 1888 Melinda Miller

This one has a simple nine patch in the center of the block.

It's also in the Brown collection, the earliest date-inscribed

Amish quilt they have.

Small nine patches where the blocks meet in the center line.

Another from the Brown collection. No extra

patchwork blocks in the square---but a lot of triangles.

I count 44 in each of the larger triangles.

Most stitchers made do with fewer HSTs.

1914 Anna Hershberger, 

from Darwin Bearley's inventory

 International Quilt Museum

The story I have heard is antique dealer Sandra Mitchell (1942-2000), who lived in Columbus, Ohio, found the quilts in Amish families in the 1970s just as the market for Amish quilts was getting hot. Holmes County has one of the highest per-capita populations of Amish in the U.S. with families  going back there for generations.

But Darwin says Sandra was more likely to have obtained the quilts she sold from pickers and other dealers.

Holmes County

Sandra and Darwin sold many of those pictured here to collectors.

We assume the name Railroad Crossing was used by the families who inherited these quilts. 

Here's a version of the basic block. It's not in BlockBase.

Mainstream quilters made it too...

from the prints popular in the 1880-1925 period.

From the Virginia project and their book Quilts of Virginia. 

These "English" quilts are pretty much the same pattern.

But I haven't found a published source.

An extra row of triangles...Maybe once red and green?

If you were going to make one you'd probably want to cut and piece your triangles like this so you have a straight edge along the straight edge.

You don't want to have to corral your edges like Anna did in 1914.

72 x 95"

I figured out a 20-inch block in EQ8.

3-inch sashing between the blocks

Diagonals cut 3-3/8" wide

by 12".

Cutting would be smarter starting with 5" squares instead of 5-1/4". How big would the block be? See what happens.