Whirling String Quilts

 

Collection of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, dated 1889.

Donor Anita Landess purchased it at an Illinois antique show.

See more at the Quilt Index:

https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=fullrec&kid=24-20-216

We've been looking at scrap quilts at the 6KnowItAlls:ShowUsYour Quilts Facebook page this month,  posting pictures of some wonderful combinations of small pieces and ingenious stitching.

Jo Reece Flowers found a silk version in North Carolina

Here's a style of very scrappy blocks without a traditional name. We can think of 

them as Whirling String Quilts or as Nann said: A Cyclone of a Quilt.

The pattern is a version of a string quilt made of the smallest pieces of fabric left over from home sewing or acquired from a clothing factory.

1889 Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum

Several date-inscribed examples in the files tell us the technique was popular in the 1890s till about 1920.

1893 International Quilt Museum

1894 in silks

1898 in cottons

1905, silks with a rather free-form hexagon in the center.

1912

But here's one obviously from the 1950s

Another question: How do you make one?

Lynn Evans Miller's Collection

Mia Koerner's Collection

As it is a string quilt you would want to piece it over a foundation---some were pieced over scrap paper but you might want to use a square of cotton.

Block over fabric foundation

And work your way out....

 What shape to start with?

Triangles

Squares

Rectangles

And some started with an irregular 5-sided piece...

Silk handbag from the collection of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts

The center shape doesn't really matter. The hard part might be to work

in a rotational manner as we are rather used to right angles.

National Museum of American History Collection

1891, attributed to Nancy Rutherford Fisher. See more about

this quilt from me and Louise:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2019/12/nancy-rutherford-fishers-marvelous-quilt.html

Ask to join our Facebook group. Each month we share pictures of a particular style.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1413180019082731