Hexagonal Pineapples

I'm always fascinated by patterns that never made it into print.

One is this variation of the pineapple or windmill blades design based on a hexagonal block.

Years ago I bought the quilt above in Illinois. It's pieced of wool and silk blends (delaines and challis) and each log is stuffed with a strip of batting. I am guessing it is from the 1870s. Moths have munched on the wools.

Merikay Waldvogel has one too. Here she is at the Quilters' Hall of Fame exhibit she curated when she was inducted. Hers looks to date from about 1910. It has a faux patchwork (cheater cloth) back and fat, puffy wool ties. The hexagonal blocks are set with red triangles.

Quilt dealer Laura Fisher has a top with plaid hexes in the center and just two rows of logs.

The few I've seen are wool and silk, blends but here's one that looks to be 1870s or 1880s in cotton prints. I saw it in an online auction.

The trick here is to rotate the hexagonal blocks so the dark areas line up with the darks. The hexagonal blocks are set with hexagonal plain blocks.

I don't know where I found this tiny picture.

My skills in spatial relations are sorely tested with some of these patterns.

The one I own at the top has baffled me for years.

Somehow she made hexagons with 6 different sides and rotated them so that the green side matched another green side, the red side matched another red side, etc.

I have no recommendations about where to find a pattern or how to draw and plan these.

My BlockBase program is all square blocks for a reason.

Quilt dealer Stella Rubin has 2 of these on her website now:

http://www.stellarubinantiques.com/items/161860/enlargement161860sra.html

http://www.stellarubinantiques.com/items/809797/enlargement809797sra.html

And Betsey Telford-Goodwin has a silk version

http://www.rockymountainquilts.com/files/antiquequilt_q8664.php

Pineapple

I've been spending a lot of time looking at pineapple quilts lately.

They appeared after log cabin quilts in the 1870s and they are a form of log cabin, sometimes with red centers, like some log cabins have.

They were usually pieced over a fabric foundation.

Cotton or silk or wool---they often had spectacular graphics

Some are made of miniscule strips.

The design continued into the 20th century. Here are some two-color examples.

Other published names include Windmill Blades and Maltese Cross.

Well, almost two color.

I printed out some 4" patterns from my BlockBase computer program (any pattern, any size, you know!)

I'm experimenting with shading and color.

Pineapple Slushy before the border

4" Blocks

Gala Madrid before the border

6" Blocks

I cannot imagine how they did this before someone invented paper piecing with the pattern actually printed on the paper.

Electric Quilt software is now available in a new version EQ7, and BlockBase works with all of the EQ incarnations.