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 Windmills, Turnstiles, Whirlwinds


On this page we cover three shapes that we call Windmills , Turnstiles , or Whirlwinds after blocks of those names.

You'll notice that a turnstile is a windmill set on point. In several blocks, below, they're combined.


Turnstile
LAC #519
Windmill
Mosaic No. 9
Electric Fan No. 1
Old Windmill
Windmill
LAC #127
Dutch Windmill
Rosebud
The Flying X Quilt

Coming soon:
Rhubarb Twist
Blocks & Pinwheels
Shooting Star
Clay's Choice

Turnstile





Turnstile
Turnstile
Farm & Fireside
1904


Barbara Brackman found Turnstile published, nameless, in a 1904 Farm & Fireside magazine, and the Ladies Art Company included it as Turnstile 24 years later in its 1928 catalog (#519).

Once you're familiar with the design, you'll see it in the center of dozens of blocks, sometimes hidden by the quilter's choice of colors. Take a look at Big Dipper and Yankee Puzzle:

The block is simple to piece and easy to find on the web; our Make It! link goes to just one of many sets of instructions.

Windmill

Windmill/Mosaic No. 9
Windmill
Ohio Farmer
1898
The Broken Wheel/Corn Design/Crow's Foot/Fan Mill/Fly/Four Leaf Clover/Kathy's Ramble/Mill Wheel/Sugar Bowl/Old Crow/Water Mill/Water Wheel/Windmills

A block this basic is bound to have a lot of names, and it does. Barbara Brackman credits Ohio Farmer for the earliest cite: Windmill, 1898. Most of the other names came from the books by Ruth Finley (1929) and Carrie Hall (1935). The Make It! icon links to designer Jinny Beyer's site; she calls it Crow's Foot.

Mosaic No. 9

Mosaic No. 9
LAC, #337
189
8
Windmill/Milly's Favorite/Pinwheel/Pinwheels & Squares/Windmill

The Ladies Art Company's #337 is simply four Windmill blocks put together. All the other names above are from the Chicago Tribune (1934-1937) except Pinwheel (1931), which is from a quilt-pattern booklet. A whole quilt in two colors looks like our mockup above.

The block would make a terrific scrap quilt. The LAC hoped that quilters would buy patterns (15 cents) or diagrams (5 cents). Or customers could order ready-made blocks, too. Mosaic No. 9 blocks, in 1928, went for 40 cents each or $4.50 a dozen, buyer's choice of colors.


 

Old Windmill





Old Windmill
Old Windmill
Progressive Farmer
Windmill

For the name Old Windmill, Yvonne Khin cites Progressive Farmer, a magazine that dates back to 1886 and is still being published. Nancy Cabot included it as Windmill in her Chicago Tribune column in 1933. In 1935, quilt researcher Carrie Hall called the block Windmill (Havig).

Nowadays, the block also goes by Turnstile, which makes sense, because there's a turnstile in the middle of the block. We haven't found an original source for that name. It's up to you whether you see a carpet of turnstile shapes or a carpet of windmills in the mockup at right.
 

Electric Fan





Electric Fan, No. 1
Electric Fan, #1
Stone
1906
Electric Fan is from Clara Stone's Practical Needlework (1906).

The block has a windmill and two turnstiles. One turnstile is in bright pink; the other is in maroon, facing the opposite direction.

Color placement was as we've shown it at left.

To see Stone's Electric Fan #2, click here:



Windmill







Windmill
Windmill
LAC, #127
1895
The LAC's block #127, Windmill is really a variation of a Turnstile block. It is not often used nowadays, so our Make It! icon links to a copy of an actual page from the Ladies Art Company instruction sheet.

TheQuiltIndex.org
says that the original publication was in 1895.

On this site, we assume that all LAC blocks appeared, as if dropped from the sky, with its first full catalog of blocks in 1898. That isn't quite true, because the first 400 blocks appeared in various publications, one by one, or in block lists, for several years before that.

We've made an exception on Windmill for the sake of good will, harmony, and respect for our even-more-quilt-poxied colleagues.

Dutch Windmill




Dutch Windmill
Dutch Windmill
LAC, #520
1928
The Ladies Art Company's Dutch Windmill was right behind Turnstile in the 1928 catalog—#520. We've shown at left as it was in the LAC catalog.

It's drawn on a 16x16 grid, and we've provided a diagram so you won't have to draw it yourself. Click on the "Make It!" icon to see.

Humming Bird/Rosebud





Humming Bird/Rosebud
Humming Bird/
Rosebud

Stone, 1906
Rosebud/Crow's Foot/Bright Star/Budding Roses/Rose Bud/Maple Leaf

Although it often goes by Rosebud, Clara Stone's Practical Needlework introduced this block as Humming Bird in 1906 (#74).

The other names followed: Rosebud (LAC #517, 1928); Crow's Foot (Old Fashioned Quilts, ca. 1931), Bright Star (Nancy Cabot, 1934), Budding Roses (Nancy Page, 1939), Rose Bud (Hall, 1935), and Maple Leaf (Nancy Cabot, 1936).

The Flying X Quilt





The Flying X Quilt
The Flying X Quilt
KCS, 1931
Double Quartet, The X Quartette

The contributor who sent this block to the Kansas City Star, which published it as The X Quartette in 1939, may not have realized that her block had already been published twice—in a 1932 Grandmother Clark booklet as Double Quartet, and once in the Star, the year before, as the Flying X Quilt. A different Star reader had sent it in.

The third name combines the first two, so someone at the Star must have realized it was a recent reprint. Why didn't they replace the block with something new? Was it too close to deadline? Why "double?" Why "X?"

"Double Quartet" makes sense if you see the star as a set of bowtie blocks wheeling within the square. If you see bowties as X shapes, the other names make sense too.