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One-way diagonal blocks ***

Box:  Diagonal Designs

Sometimes diagonal blocks, including Jacob's Ladders, were set on point, so the rows were perpendicular to the bed, according to Ruth Finley. Most were set on the diagonal. Certainly, some were also set in lattices and such. See our box, below.

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Carrie Nation Quilt

Carrie Nation Quilt
KCS, 1940
As published
...but you have to use THIS block.



Carrie Nation QuiltThe Kansas City Star published this block twice, in 1940 and 1947. It made sense: Carrie Nation sold a lot of newspapers.

Nation was a Kentucky-born activist whose beloved first husband died of delirium tremens, a nightmarish side effect of alcohol withdrawal, in 1869, leaving her with a young daughter who was mentally ill.

Never mind that Nation had told him he couldn't come home till he was dry; she blamed alcohol for everything.

In 1900, after what she believed was a vision from God, Nation took to smashing glassware, bottles, mirrors, and furniture in the saloons of Kansas. She was nearly six feet tall, and she was especially fearsome after she started using a hatchet instead of bricks and rocks.

Nation was a vivid part of a thriving "Temperance" movement led by reform-minded Christian women campaigning for a constitutional amendment against alcohol. Eventually, she racked up about 30 arrests in at least three different states. The block is a straightforward combination of four-patches and plain blocks — but to make the squares line up properly, you need to make a block of a different size, as we've shown above at left. Click on the "Make It!" icon, above right, to go to instructions for making one. Nation with a cause.

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The three blocks below are all very similar, and they're all nine-patches. We've posted two diagrams for the three.

Garret Window

Garret Window

Garret Window
Cabot, 1938

Garret Window, a nine-patch block, is credited to Nancy Cabot of the Chicago Tribune (1938).

Garret Window looks all but identical to Road to California, below (Gutcheon, 1973), but Garret Window's layout is simpler, because its two corner triangles are not divided into smaller pieces.

Road to California

Road to California
Road to California
Gutcheon, 1973 In the graphic at left, you'll see that the upper left and lower right corners (pale green) are made of three pieces each, a square and two half-squares.

Those pieces aren't necessary. All the Garret Window blocks can use a single triangle for each of the two corners in light green.

If you do, though, you're forced to sew most of the block on the bias, which is a sure way to stretch the fabric and make the block edges inaccurate. You can minimize the problem by starching the pieces before sewing them.

To our eyes, both Garret Window and Road to California look like an army of Tribbles launching themselves into space. What, have you never met a Trekkie?

Attic Window

Attic Window Attic Window
Farm Journal, undated
Attic Window shows how a small change in a block can affect the entire quilt. A stronger color in two large triangles brings out the diagonal in the mockup.

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The New Four Patch

The New Four-Patch The New Four-Patch
Farm & Fireside, 1884 World's Fair Block/Buckeye Beauty/Hour Glass/Railroad Crossing/Jacob's Ladder/Going to Chicago/World's Fair/Chicago World's Fair/Statehouse/Railroad/Gay Scrap Quilt/Double Four Patch

Take two four-patches and four half-square triangles, set them in a four-patch arrangement, and you've got the New Four Patch, first published in 1884 by Farm & Fireside magazine. We've used three colors to emphasize the seams. It was originally published as a block of four, like the graphic at left.

The block really looks like this:

Use very dark and light colors, and it's a truncated Jacob's Ladder.

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The Squares Within Squares

The Squares Within Squares (Brackman)

The Squares Within Squares
Cabot, 1936/
Beyer

The Squares Within Squares
Cabot, 1936/ Brackman

The Squares Within Squares (Beyer)Squares Within Squares

Another block credited to Nancy Cabot of the Chicago Tribune, Squares Within Squares, was published in 1936.

We haven't seen an original, so we include both versions that we've seen with this name. One is from Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Blocks; the other is from Jinny Beyer's Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns. We think that Beyer's version is most likely to be the one Cabot intended because there are no others like it that we've seen.

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Nine-Patch Chain

Nine-Patch ChainNine-Patch Chain
Gutcheon, 1973



Nine-Patch Chain This block is simply an arrangement of 9-patch and plain squares in two colors. It wouldn't take much to arrange it so that it looks like a Single Irish Chain.

It owes its name to Gutcheon's The Perfect Patchwork Primer (1973).

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The World's Fair

The World's Fair

The World's Fair
Ladies Art Co., #66
1897

The World's Fair
Colors reversed to show seamlines.

Quilt blocks named for the World's Fair honored two different World Fairs both held in Chicago but 30 years apart. "World's Fair Block" (left) was named for the 1893 Fair. It's #66 in the Ladies Art Company catalog of 1897. All the other World's Fair blocks that we know of were named for the Fair of 1933.

The block was presented as is. The dark colors obscure the inexplicable half-square triangles that stand in for the larger squares. Why not just use a square?

Perhaps this pattern was supposed to be used for Jacob's Ladder blocks as well. Two blocks for one! What a deal for a thrifty quiltmaker. The only catch for the LAC's plan (if that's what it was) is that no quilter needs a " store-boughten" diagram for a block this simple.

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Diagonal Designs Jacob's Ladder blocks are traditionally set in only one direction, according to quilt-history doyenne Ruth Finley, but nowadays diagonal blocks are more often placed to make concentric or lattice patterns. Take a look. One direction Jacob's Ladder Concentric Road to Oklahoma Lattice Garret Window

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