FieldGuidetoQuilts.com

Lady of the Lake & more

The upper edge of Lady of the Lake has a half-square triangle in the right corner, so the border's sawtooth rows are reversed compared to Bear Paws. That half-square triangle is what this page's blocks have in common.

Box: To Border, or Not to Border?

---

Lady of the Lake

Lady of the Lake: another traditional layout

Lady of the Lake: another traditional layout Classic layout Hills of Vermont

First published in the Ladies Art Company catalog of 1897 as #174, the Lady of the Lake is a split block; the colors are reversed on either side of a diagonal line.

The name could be as old as the legend of King Arthur, but we think the block was more likely named for a book-length potboiler of a poem by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1810. Set in the Scottish Highlands, The Lady of the Lake swept Anglophiles off their feet, including American quilters.

The "lady" was a chieftan's daughter, Ellen. Whenever they had visitors, she'd row a boat from the island castle where they lived to the lakeshore to pick them up. Ellen was Scotland's most eligible bachelorette. One-sentence spoiler: Of the three gallant galoots who loved her, she got the one she wanted.

Scott's story had a long tail. It drenched Victorian literature in syrup and all but wrote Hollywood's quintessential script. Hail to the Chief, the Presidents' official anthem, is from an 1812 musical based on the story. It was first used by ex-President George Washington.

The name Hills of Vermont was designer Nancy Page's brainchild, ca. 1938.

The traditional, signature layout of Lady of the Lake is on point, meaning that the squares are turned 45 degrees. The large, dark half-triangles are at the bottom with the lighter ones on top. The layout suggests sky over water. The off-point layout is also traditional.

---

Framed Squares

Framed Squares Waving Grain

A 1934 block by Nancy Page (Florence La Ganke) of the Birmingham News; the paper published it under the name Waving Grain in 1941.

---

Indian Plume

Indian Plume Indian Plume appeared around 1963 in an "Aunt Martha" booklet (#3614). The block's corners are clipped off to accommodate the whole-quilt design. A sawtooth border surrounded the multiblock pattern.

---

Indian Plumes

This version of Indian Plumes appeared in Delores Hinson's A Quilter's Companion, published in 1973.

---

West Wind

West Wind The Victory Boat

Credited to Nancy Page (1934), this block also appeared in the Kansas City Star in 1944 with the timely name "Victory Boat."

The Star's version, sent in by a reader, had just two colors. The triangle in medium pink at left was the same dark color as the sawtooths.

---

Sail Boat

Sail Boat Quilt researcher Carrie Hall published Sail Boat in her 1935 book The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America, and she included it and Sailboat, below, in the collection of blocks she stitched up and donated in 1938 to the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

---

Sailboat

Sail Boat
Hall
1935

Sailboat



Sailboat Quilt researcher Carrie Hall published Sail Boat in her 1935 book The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America, and she included it and Sailboat, below, in the collection of blocks she stitched up and donated in 1938 to the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

---

Birds in the Air

This block dates back only to 1973, when it was published in Holstein's The Pieced Quilt.

.pdf of KCS block dated 5/9/31

---

Old Maid's Puzzle

Old Maid's Puzzle
A block with both sawtooth rows and curves is unusual. This one was published about 1931 in a booklet called Prize Winning Designs, according to Jinny Beyer's Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns.

---

Box: To border, or not to border? Quilt columns in the newspapers often showed blocks with a full border, and the reader was expected to know that the border was shared with the neighboring block. That's only one option with these framed blocks. Many antique quilts have a sawtooth row around every single block, resulting in a doubled border between blocks. We've also seen quilts with fully bordered blocks, each of which is separated from the others by a windowpane — that is, strips of a single additional fabric that runs between all the blocks. We'll post examples from the public domain as we find them.

---

---