Flying Geese-Wild Goose Chase

 

Mark French Antiques

Classic quilt in the Wild Goose Chase or Flying Geese design.

The earliest publication I've been able to find is the Ladies' Art Company,

which called the pattern Wild Goose Chase in their end-of-the-19th-century catalog.

They seem to have the proportions wrong.

Something I echoed in BlockBase & The Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

The triangle should be a right angle HST.

Like this one attributed to Abba May Alcott in the collection of Orchard House in Massachusetts.

Date-inscribed 1847

The earliest date-inscribed example in the files is this one associated with Samuel B Cleaver in the 

Brooklyn Museum's Collection. Dawn at Collector With a Needle took a detail shot a few years ago when it was on display.

Possibly from the Cleaver family who lived in this house Linden Hall in Port Penn, Delaware

Massachusetts Project & the Quilt Index

The files have several examples from about 1840 with the strips offering a good place to recycle some old chintz curtains perhaps.

This one may be a little earlier---1830s?

Garth Auctioneers

Rhode Island Project

Collection of the Babcock Smith House

International Quilt Museum

Or some samples.

Connecticut Project---that's a stripe in the alternate plain strip.

UPDATE:

Beth Donaldson of the Quilt Index suggested this one from

Merry Silber's collection be included. Purple perfection.

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=12-8-1365

Observation indicates the pattern originated

about 1840 with the new abundance of cotton prints, favored by New Englanders.

Mid-20th-century

The design became a national pattern

With variations

Triple Strips

Another early one from Indiana University's Museum

With the Prussian blue prints so popular in the 1840's & '50s.

Connecticut Project

About 1900

South Carolina project, attributed to Hattie Jones Sutton 

of Georgia, late 19th century

And then there are variations within the geese...

Hepzibah Prentice, Genesee County, New York

Mid - 19th

Maybe 1850-1875

New York project

1880-1920?

I suppose anything that makes a right triangle could be a goose.

And then I remembered I'd made this reproduction quilt years ago.