FieldGuidetoQuilts.com
 Octagons & others

Below are octagons, dodecahedrons, and other polygonal blocks that are neither square nor round nor hexagonal nor continuous; also, a few blocks with octagonal centers.


Gold Fish
IXL
Cheyenne
Golden Gates
Octagonal Star
Ozark Cobble Stone
Rosalia Flower Garden
Caesar's Crown
Twist Patchwork
Twist Patchwork LAC

Coming soon:
Windmill
Star

See also:
Eight-pointed Star

Gold Fish



Gold Fish
KCS, 1906



Gold FishFish/Whirligig/Fish Block/ The Fish Quilt/An Airplane Motif/ Trout & Bass/Gold Fish/Fish Circle/Starfish/Bass & Trout/Dove in the Window

It's hard to say what name is most often used for this block, but its first names, in 1906, were Fish and Whirligig.

The colors at left were recommended by the Kansas City Star the second time it published this block, in 1931. The newspaper ran it under five different names over the course of 18 years. The quilt-block designer Nancy Cabot called it Trout and Bass Block in 1937.

We'd call it Star Wars, after Ronald Reagan's would-be missile defense system, but we're too late to claim naming privileges.

IXL



IXL
KCS, 1936 IXL/I Excel

A Kansas City Star reader from Missouri contributed this two-color block published in 1936. It is a sister to the square block Spring Beauty, also from the Star.

Like Cheyenne, below, IXL is linked by on-point square blocks. For more on Spring Beauty, click here: .



IXL

Cheyenne





Cheyenne Cheyenne
KCS, 1933
The year 1933 is the earliest definitive date for this block's publication, in the Kansas City Star.

The Star illustrated the block as an octagon rather than a square. That was a tad misleading, because the blocks can only be linked with, in effect, a single on-point square that shares a side with each of 4 octagons.

Or you can alternate the corner colors, creating a variation of Cheyenne, at least by this site's definition. Others would count only the underlying pattern of pieces as an individual block, no matter what the colors.






Cheyenne variation

Golden Gates

Golden Gates
Golden Gates
LAC, #117
1897
Golden Gates is another block from the Ladies Art Company catalog of 1897, 40 years before the Golden Gate Bridge opened up at the mouth of San Francisco Bay. So what were the Golden Gates back then? An alternative to the Pearly Gates?

In any case, the block was numbered #117, and when it was finished using the LAC's pattern, it was 24 inches across.

Ozark Cobble Stone

Ozark Cobble Stone
KCS, 1936The Ozark Cobble Stone is not a block per se but a way to lay out octagons on a quilt top by adding a square to four of an octagon's eight sides.

In the Kansas City Star, which published the block in 1936, every hexagon was made from a different scrap fabric and the squares were of a single solid color.
Ozark Cobble Stone

Rosalia Flower Garden


Rosalia Flower Garden
KCS, 1939 Jack's Chain

Rosalia Flower Garden has an hexagonal center, but the block itself is a dodecagon. That's right—it has 12 sides. e blocks link together so that they share a 3x3 checkerboard on each side.

The block is from the Kansas City Star, 1939. The Star recommended a print for the squares, yellow for the triangles, and white for the rest. Click on the block to see a whole-quilt mockup.

Marcia Hohn explains how to make this imposing block in QuiltersCache.com. You'll go to her instruction page when you click the icon at upper right. Hats off to Allison Person for alerting us to the page!
Rosalia Flower Garden

Caesar's Crown


Caesar's CrownThis unusual block has a hexagonal center, but its outer edge is an irregular octagon, and looking at a single block gives you far less than the whole picture. In the whole-quilt mockup, each block has the feel of a spiky hexagon. We cannot verify the block name. Our source is the eBay seller French72, who auctioned a quilt of this pattern in September 2016. This unusual block has a hexagonal center, but its outer edge is an irregular octagon, and looking at a single block gives you far less than the whole picture. In the whole-quilt mockup, each block has the feel of a spiky hexagon.

We cannot verify the block name. Our source is the eBay seller French72, who auctioned a quilt of this pattern in September 2016.



Photos below courtesy of French72, eBay seller.


Caesar's Crown

Twist Patchwork (Khin)

Twist Patchwork (Khin) Twist Patchwork
Khin, 1988
 This version of Twist Patchwork is from Yvonne Khin's Collectors Dictionary of Quilt Names and Patterns (1988). The four-color block makes a satisfying collection of patterns on a quilt top.

You do have to pay close attention to color values, especially if you're using prints.

Comparing light values means figuring out which fabric is lighter than the other, but it's more complicated than it sounds. Darker tints can be intense instead of dark, and lighter hues can look darker than they really are if they're camouflaged with an eye-fooling color. The real challenge is to compare prints.

Quilters use a gadget called a "Ruby Beholder," known to non-quilters as a piece of red Plexiglas, aka red light filter, to gauge light values. Spread out your fabrics and behold them through the ruby doobie thing, and the colors magically turn into black, white, and gray.

We hear that blue filters help too, but we haven't tried them ourselves.

Twist Patchwork (LAC)





Twist Patchwork (LAC)
Twist Patchwork
LAC #294
1897
 From the Ladies Art Company's 1897 catalog comes a design that duplicates the cane seats in vintage chairs. Our block is an eight-patch (or a four-patch, depending on who's talking), while the LAC's was based on a 16 x 16 grid. It is the LAC's block #294. The LAC illustration showed four of the blocks that we've pictured at left.