The curious feature of snowball blocks is that they are identical except for the proportions of the quarter circle(s) versus the block, and even that doesn't vary much. You'll see what we mean in the whole-quilt mockups below.
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 Snow Ball
 Base Ball
 Boston Puzzle
 Polka Dots
 Give & Take
 Washing-
ton Snow Ball
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Snow Ball
Snow Ball
Ladies Art Co., #104
1897
 Snowball, Mill Wheel, Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
Snow Ball is an assembly of four blocks with four quarter-circles each. It was first published in the LAC catalog of 1897 as #104. The whole-quilt result is a series of circles placed one atop the other.
Three later blocks are identical to Snow Ball: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Carrie Hall, 1933), Snowball (Nancy Cabot, 1933), and Mill Wheel (Ickes, 1949).
Note for newbies: If you're searching for a block by name, remember that most block names — especially Robbing Peter to Pay Paul—refer to more than one block design. Look for them on our search-the-site page by clicking the icon in the upper left corner of this page.
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Base Ball
Base Ball
Ladies Art Co., #179
1897
Baseball/Bows & Arrows/Circle Design/Marble Quilt/The Marble Quilt/Robbing Peter to Pay Paul/Steeple Chase/Steeplechase/Polka Dot
This de facto snowball block (#179) is from the same Ladies Art Company catalog as Snow Ball (#104) and Boston Puzzle (#249). The graphic at left constitutes one block.
If you, like us, wonder why a simple polka-dot block showed up three times in one catalog, all we can say is that the LAC's first full catalog had 400 blocks.
Exactly. Four. Hundred. Blocks. Without the repetitions, the total would have been an awkward 398.
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Boston Puzzle
Boston Puzzle
Ladies Art Co., #249
1897 Baseball/Circle Design/Polka Dots
Boston Puzzle is precisely the same block as Base Ball, except that it's shifted a half-block both vertically and horizontally.
Take a look in the corners of Base Ball and Boston Puzzle. Base Ball has a quarter-circle in the corner, but Boston Puzzle does not. It's the same shift that you see in Irish Puzzle and Barrister's Block  .
You'll note, however, that both Boston Puzzle and Base Ball have dots in a different configuration from Snow Ball: Each row is offset from its neighboring row. |
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Polka Dots
Polka Dots
Kansas City Star
1931
In Polka Dots, the dots are laid out like Snow Ball, but each full circle is made from four quarters with a single half-circle each, and of those blocks alternates colors with its neighbor.
The source is Aunt Martha booklet Easy Quilts (No. 3500, ca. 1958), which showed Polka Dots as a Drunkard's Path design. Technically, it is: The individual blocks each include a single quarter-circle. Polka Dots lacks the curvy block-to-block line of the usual Drunkard's Path style.
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Give & Take
 Give & Take
Stone
1906 Give & Take
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Washington Snow Ball
 Washington Snow Ball  Washington
Snow Ball
Stone, 1906
The real potential of the block is in the full-circle snowballs. Each could be filled in with a bird, an historic house, a fabric photo of a family member, or an appliqued doily, and that's just for starters.
 A plain circle could be quilted with a self-contained circle design, too.
There are many such designs — including those made for long-arm quilting machines. In size, the machines range from medium desk to one-car garage, and they make a single day's work out of a task that once took a hand quilter weeks, months, or years. The design at right is called Columbia Finial Arch Array. It's from QuiltedJoy.com.
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Snowball 