Center-square pinwheels

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Windmill

Double Windmill

Slashed Album

Flying Bats
Finley

Flying Bats
Wheeler

Friendship Star

Quartered Star

Wheat Field

Box Quilt Pattern

Formal Garden

Bacon Patch

Churn Dash
Finley

Pin Wheel
Finley

The Bat

Windmill

Windmill (Aunt Martha)

Windmill
Aunt Martha, 1954 A four-patch block (based on a 4x4 grid), Windmill comes from a 1954 "Aunt Martha" booklet from Colonial Patterns, Inc., a publisher whose history is detailed in Jinny Beyer's Quilters Album of Patchwork Patterns (2009).

Double Windmill

Double Windmill

Double Windmill
Cabot, 1938

Sky Rockets

Double Windmill is a more ambitious, three-color version of Windmill from the Chicago Tribune (1938). Nancy Cabot was its designer. Nancy Page, a designer from the Birmingham News, called it Sky Rockets a few years later.

Slashed Album

Slashed Album

Slashed Album
Ladies Art Co., #37 Two-color

Slashed Album (three colors)

Slashed Album
Three-color

Slashed Album was #37 in the Ladies Art Company's 1897 catalog, and we hear that it was also in an 1895 edition.

The two-color edition, which is what the LAC published, winds up looking like a mass of alternating rows of four diamonds.

It is entirely unlike the effect of adding a third color.

Slashed Album could make a very pretty block with different fabrics for each diamond, but nobody except us has ever thought of that.

Flying Bats

Flying Bats
Finley, 1929 A near twin to Slashed Album is the two color version called Flying Bats, captured by Ruth Finley in Old Patchwork Quilts (1929). It's based on an 8x8 grid.

We imagine that a cloud of flying bats would look exactly like this if it was heading towards us, but it would also be spinning.

If you're looking for the star block called Flying Bat, click here:

Flying Bats (Wheeler)

Flying Bats in three colors

Flying Bats
Wheeler, 1933

Flying BatsOpen Windows

By flipping and turning Slashed Album, the pseudonymous designer called Laura Wheeler added an on-point square to the center of Flying Bats and made it unique. The block was published in 1933 in the Cincinnati Enquirer. We don't know where the colors were placed.

Nancy Cabot called it Open Windows. (Presumably, if you have open windows, you will soon have flying bats.) It was in the Chicago Tribune in 1937.

Friendship Star

Friendship Star
Gutcheon, 1973 New Home/The Lost Goslin'/Wings in a Whirl/The Pin Wheel

Although it was published once as New Home in 1907 (Good Stories) and twice in the Kansas City Star (1939 and 1953), the name Gutcheon gave this block in The Perfect Patchwork Primer (1973) is the one that stuck.

Quartered Star

Fort Sumpter/Fort Sumter

Quartered Star
James, 1978 Michael James' The Quilter's Handbook (1978) included this star, according to Jinny Beyer's Quilter's Album, which is our source for this block and for Friendship Star, above. In case it's not obvious, the block is a nine-patch. The choice of color placement in the graphic is ours.

We think Quartered Star looks terrific in our whole-quilt mockup.

Wheat Field

Wheat Field

Wheat Field
Malone, 2003

This intriguing block is from Maggie Malone's 5,500 Quilt Block Designs (2003).

Because of the arrangement of triangles, it may not look as if it's drawn on a 4 x 4 grid, but it is.

Box Quilt Pattern

Alternative setting with offset blocks

Box Quilt Pattern
LAC, #351
1897

Box Quilt Pattern

Box Car Patch/Box Quilt/Eccentric Star/Churn Dash/Contrary Husband Quilt

Like so many other designs, this one was first printed in 1897 by the Ladies Art Company (#351). Designer Nancy Cabot named the design Box Car Patch in 1934, and the other names followed. The block is drawn on a 7x7 grid.

The name Contrary Husband comes from a 1938 Kansas City Star. Inevitably, a Contrary Wife block followed, in 1941. Contrary Wife usually goes by the name Double Hour Glass. You'll find it here:

Formal Garden

Formal Garden

Formal Garden
Farm Journal and Farmer's Wife Supplement, 1945

Eccentric Star

This block doesn't look as if it's drawn on a 3x3 grid, but it is. It was first published in 1945 in a magazine supplement from Farm Journal and Farmer's Wife, according to Jinny Beyer, who also lists the name Eccentric Star in her wonderful Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns.

As a whole quilt, the block creates a pinwheel pattern where the corners meet. On this site, we call a whirlwind. On this page, the whirlwind pattern appears in Box Quilt, Bacon Patch, Windmill, and Double Windmill.

Bacon Patch

Bacon Patch
Cabot

Otherwise identical to Formal Garden, Bacon Patch is on a larger grid that appears to be a five-patch.

Quilt historian Barbara Brackman attributes Bacon Patch to designer Nancy Cabot of the Chicago Tribune.

Churn Dash

Churn Dash (Finley)

Churn Dash
Finley, 1929

Ruth Finley's Churn Dash, published in her 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them, is almost identical to Windmill, above.

Almost. Finley's block involves more time and less expertise. There are four identically colored squares in the center—a bit of extra sewing time — and all the squares are the same size.

Pin Wheel

Pin Wheel
Finley, 1929

Pinwheel, The Pinwheel, Pin Wheels, Paper Pinwheels

Ruth Finley's Pin Wheel is a lot like her Churn Dash, but requires less work to achieve more style. Pin Wheel has only four half-square triangles, but it has three color values. Compared with Churn Dash, we imagine that Pin Wheel was the go-to sewing-practice block for the 19th century's coolest mommies.

The alternate names above are from the pseudonymous Laura Wheeler (two from 1933) Carrie Hall (1935), and Nancy Page (1938), according to Jinny Beyer's Quilter's Album (2009).

The Bat

The Bat
Prize Winning Designs
1931

The Bat's Block/Blue Bell Block

The booklet Prize Winning Designs (1931), an Aunt Martha booklet (1933), and Nancy Cabot (1937) are all cited for this block; in 1940, The Progressive Farmer called it Blue Bell Block.