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Washing-ton's Puzzle
Duck Creek Puzzle
Windmill/
Radio
Windmill
Radio Windmill
Arabic Lattice

Coming soon:
The Blockade
A Four-corner puzzle
Southern Belle
Broken Dish



Washington's Puzzle





Washington's Puzzle

Washington's Puzzle
Ladies Art Company
#32, 1897

Checkerboard Skew

The Ladies Art Company published this block as its #32 in 1897. Seventy-six years later, it was republished as Checkerboard Skew in the Gutcheons' Perfect Patchwork Primer.


Delaware Crosspatch



Delaware
Crosspatch

Cabot, 1937



Delaware Crosspatch

The invention of Nancy Cabot, Delaware Crosspatch was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1937.


Duck Creek Puzzle






Duck Creek Puzzle
Duck Creek Puzzle
Cabot, 1937
Like Delaware Crosspatch, Cabot's Duck Creek Puzzle was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1937.

Jinny Beyer drew up this block on a 40 x 40 grid in her Quilter's Album, and we've followed her lead in drawing it here.


It might look terrific with every block offset by half. Someday we'll do a mockup of that too.

Windmill/Radio Windmill





Radio Windmill

Windmill/Radio Windmill
Prize Winning Designs, 1931
Radio Windmill
Kansas City Star, 1941
Windmill/The Windmill of Amsterdam

Barbara Brackman credits Nancy Cabot with the name Windmill in her Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. However, Beyer places the first time this block was published as 1931 in Prize Winning Designs, and notes that it was called The Windmill of Amsterdamin 1933 in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The Kansas City Star published the block in four-part pattern (right) in 1941, crediting the design to an Iowa reader. The changes are few. The KCS block was illustrated with high-contrast colors to create a noticeable star shape, which they saw as the focus of the block. They called it Radio Windmill.

Radio Windmill is the shortest unique name we've seen for the block, and because the two blocks shown here are so closely related, we'd call both of them Radio Windmill.

Arabic Lattice




5024Betty, the quilt's eBay seller, gave us permission to use this photo.
Arabic Lattice
LAC, #416
ca. 1901
This block really caught our eye when we saw it in a quilt listed on eBay in 2014.

Arabic Lattice came along around 1901, published as the Ladies Art Company's #416. The LAC's catalog illustration showed four quarter blocks that are tilted and then flipped to be mirror images.
And while it may not be as obvious as it is in some other blocks, a four-patch checkerboard is integral to the design.

Here's a quarter block:


The Blockade
coming soon


A Four-corner puzzle
coming soon


Southern Belle
coming soon



Broken Dish
coming soon