FieldGuidetoQuilts.com
 Double & Triple Irish Chains

One rule of thumb with Irish Chains is that you call it single, double or triple based on the number of diagonal rows in the dominant color, the one that contrasts most with the background.



Double Irish Chain
Double Irish Chain
Triple Irish Chain
Irish Chain (Small)
Triple Irish Chain (Large)
Triple Irish Chain
Sara's Favorite

Coming soon:
Aunt Mary's Double Irish Chain

Double Irish Chain

Double Irish Chain

Chained Five Patch/Cube Lattice/Irish Chain/Double Irish Cross/Grandmother's Irish Chain

The Ladies Art Company published Double Irish Chain in 1897.


it's good to remember that the first consumer-friendly treadle sewing machine came along in 1851 (before that, they were hand cranked).

By 1897, sewing machines were widespread, and our great-great-great grandmothers were thanking their lucky stars that they didn't have to make it the way their own grandmothers did.

Double Irish Chain

Double Irish Chain (Alan)This design is identical to the LAC's Double Irish Chain (above), except that it has three colors instead of two. The third color runs between the double lines of squares.

It's credited to Jane Alan, Illinois State Register, 1932.

Triple Irish Chain

Triple Irish Chain
Quilt historian Ruth Finley included this design in her 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts: And the Women Who Made Them.

Irish Chain/Triple Irish Chain (Small)

Irish Chain (KCS)Irish Chain (KCS)Triple Irish Chain/Triple Irish Chain (Small)

Kansas City Star designer Ruby McKim published this variation first, in 1929. Its name was Irish Chain.

We've shown two color combinations of the design.

Six years later, both Nancy Page and Nancy Cabot named it Triple Irish Chain. True, it has three colors, but every diagonal row is five squares across. Presumably, no one wanted to introduce a quintuple Irish Chain.

The design's third name, Triple Irish Chain (Small), exists because a few years later, Nancy Page gave a similar design the name Irish Chain (Large). She may have thought she had to differentiate them somehow.

The "large" triple chain (below) has five squares across each diagonal row, just like this one.

Triple Irish Chain (Large)

Triple Irish Chain (Large) Nancy Page's 1935 "large" Triple Irish Chain has five rows of diagonals (as do other triple Irish chains), but its one-color squares lighten up the intersections.

Triple Irish Chain

Triple Irish Chain (Hall)
Triple Irish Chain
Hall, 1935 We've shown Hall's Triple Irish Chain at left exactly as quilt researcher Carrie Hall did in her 1935 Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America, with a block of 11 squares by 11.

Irish Chain blocks of odd-numbered rows don't come together symmetrically, so the intersections have a four-patch of a single color in the middle. Perhaps it would be more noticeable in a stronger color than our example. We'll never know.

Sara's Favorite

Sara's Favorite
Hall, 1935 Sarah's Favorite
LAC #280, 1897 Sara's Favorite (Hall)
Sarah's Favorite/Sally's Favorite

Carrie Hall's version of an Irish Cousin, Sara's Favorite, came along in 1935. We'd guess that Hall's version is simply a corrected Sarah's Favorite, which was the Ladies Art Company's block back in 1897. That would explain the name.

We hear that Nancy Cabot called it Sally's Favorite in 1934, but we have not seen an original.




Sarah's Favorite (LAC)

We can see why the LAC didn't catch its mistake: On most block designs, alternating corner colors make an interesting four-patch when the blocks go together.
We've mocked up the LAC's version because we wanted to see what it looks like, and maybe you do, too. It's in pale pink because seeing both mockups in the same color is busy enough to drive you cross-eyed.

It can be surprisingly difficult to picture how blocks will look when they come together, and the LAC was working a century ahead of the popular quilt-planning program called Electric Quilt (in its its eighth edition as of 2020). The program lets you plan a quilt in detail. You can even import a photo of your own fabric for your electronic mockup. It's yours for a mere $240.