Selecting a design is quite an individual problem and naturally we can not tell you which one you would enjoy most. However, we can tell you which ones are most popular – do you want the one everybody is making or an individual one? There are over a hundred patterns here in your little book, each with possibilities of loveliness. Double Wedding Ring is being made by thousands, usually from the widest possible selection of print scraps. It is unquestionably popular, and yet the owner of an art needlework shop told me recently that in her opinion it was an ugly, erratic design! She had not seen it in our rainbow tint plan which (opinion again!) is really more lovely than when made of all unrelated prints. “Dresden Plate” or “Friendship Ring,” the hexagon plan quilts like “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” or the “French Bouquet” are favorites and not so because they are easy to make, either. Flower and basket quilts are popular; so are the tree designs and stars – there are some very beautiful star patterns, with the Lone Star best beloved of all.
Irish chains are charming for the amount of work. They come under the class of cut pieces all straight with the weave of the material; no triangles or diamonds to an Irish Chain, but exactly even squares placed as shown with our pattern of Triple Irish Chain or of Double Irish Cross. An ordinary nine-patch set together with alternate plain squares is sometimes called Single Irish Chain, while 9 each way in one block with 3 appliqued onto alternate square corners is called “Forty Niner” and not Quadruple Irish!
Names often have much to do with a quilt’s popularity. They do more than identify a certain combination of pieces – a catchy name like Crazy Ann, Dove in the Window, or Wild Goose Chase whets the imagination. We get many letters from people saying, “I have an old family quilt, pieced like the sketch with red, etc., etc., please, what is its name?” And if we can trace back its family branches, the grateful owner feels like the treasure of her ancestors has been made legitimate.
Names of the same pattern do vary. Period, locality and general human contrariness have caused many a fog over quilt escutcheons. An editor of the Chicago Daily News wrote: “Tell me, is it possible that there be various ‘Roads to California’ with one of them looking like ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ or possibly ‘Stepping Stones’?” Yes, and “Drunkard’s Path” was sometimes “Wonder of the World,” and that long before prohibition, too!
Some quilt names are of pioneer ancestry with a breath of dare and danger like “Bear’s Paw,” “Crossed Canoes,” “Indian Trail,” “Prairie Queen.” Others have a staid and homey background – “Rail Fence,” “Mill Wheel,” “Meadow Lily,” “Sun Dial,” while yet another group bespeaks the tang of the sea – “Square and Compass,” “Ship’s Wheel,” “Ocean Wave,” “Storm at Sea,” “Rolling Star” – these all come from coastwise ancestry. And by the way, the very Ship’s Wheel of Cape Cod is called Harvest Sun in Pennsylvania.