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Monday, December 27, 2010

Do You Know This Block?

Since finishing my Dutch Treat quilt on the 17th, I've been kind of bouncing here and there trying to settle on something to work on.  I spent several nights catching up on my Raggedy and Friends blocks.  I finished the embroidery on all three I was behind, but have only pieced one of them, so no pictures taken yet.

Last night I dug out my container of quilt pieces from my Grandmother.  I've posted pictures of these in the past but it's been awhile.  I decided to work on some of these blocks



I don't know the name of the block.  The closest I can find is that it might be a variation of the Hexagon Star in Maggie Malone's book.  Grandma had several of these hand pieced



I had a skirt made from the orange fabric in the first picture. My sister and I had skirts from the two fabrics in the upper left of the second picture. I had the turquoise and she had the lavendar. 

In addition to the pieced blocks there is a string of cut pieces



The string on the left contains pieces for this block, only slightly smaller.  All of the components are there, strung in order.  I can't imagine having the patience to sit and cut all of these pieces out.  I'm more of a "cut a few, piece a few" type gal.

I dug out another stash of pattern templates from Grandma and found these pieces cut from (I think) a Workbasket magazine.



Unfortunately there is no name shown for the block.  Grandma had several cardboard and sandpaper templates cut.  She seemed to have issues regarding seam allowances.  The pieced blocks correspond pretty well to the size shown in the pattern.  The string of cut pieces seem to be minus the seam allowance.  And, at least for her, cutting with scissors didn't yield perfectly sized pieces. 

She also used a variety of white fabric and it isn't the best quality so I've decided to cut new white pieces and use her fabric for the hexagon and colored triangles. 

I pieced two of them by hand.


My points are never as sharp as Crispy's.  Wish she lived close enough to give me lots of one on one hand piecing tutoring.  I know in theory what to do. It just doesn't always work out that way.  Of course it would help if the pieces were a bit more accurately cut.

So maybe this will be my sitting in the recliner, listening to TV evening project for awhile.  I'm thinking there is no chance the blocks will set together like show in the pattern so I'm considering sashing them all.  Or I found an enlarged block with this as the center in Maggie Malone's book . That might work too.  I may decide to take apart the blocks Grandma pieced and cut them down to size to fit with the others.

Anyone recognize this block?

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  We did. 

Stay warm.
Mary





4 comments:

Linda in Calif. said...

Very interesting block - but I haven't seen or heard of it before. Good luck with the project. It's really going to be pretty and so wonderful to have.

Aunt 'Reen said...

Mary - I love these blocks and seeing all the vintage fabrics from your grandmother's collection.
This block looks like it may be a variation of the Hexagon Snowflake quilt.
Perhaps someone can check to see if the paper pattern you have was published by the Ladies Art Company in St Louis (possibly in the early to mid 1930's)

The 2 hand pieced blocks you created are beautiful!

sewfunquilts said...

What a treasure you have from your Grandmother. And....you sure have more patience than I do..good luck with all that hand work.

Crispy said...

According to Barbara Brackman (page 51), the block is called either Brilliant Star - Nancy Page 1/26/34 or Pointing Star - KC Star 3/2/36.

Sometimes good points can be nothing more than the direction the piece is pressed. Since seam allowance size isn't an issue in hand piecing, maybe cutting plastic templates to the correct size and drawing the sewing line will help...


Crispy