Quilt by Harriet Barrow, Claiborne Parish, Louisiana.
From the Texas project and the Quilt Index.
Family thought Harriet's mother made this quilt
but it is more likely dated to Harriet's life span
or her daughter's.
But we find half blocks along the edge so often
that we have to view it as a shared idea, a style characteristic
common in Southern quilts after 1880 or so.
Elizabeth Voss, Forsyth County, North Carolina
NC project & the Quilt Index
From an auction of Beulah Ketchie's
estate, North Carolina
It is more than just one woman's practical solution
to a problem, such as:
Pattern of a certain size, quilt of an incompatible size.
Improvisation necessary.
A layout like this from an online auction is puzzling. The woman had 6
blocks. She cut 3 in half for the edges. This was the look she was after.
She would have gotten the same size quilt if she'd used the blocks whole.
The idea of cutting a block in half is difficult for us to understand. As Barb R commented: "How could you put that much work into an applique block and
then chop it in half!!"
Mid-20th-century quilt with 2 blocks chopped for the side.
Frugality?
Laura S had a common idea as to why. "Waste not; want not." And this may indeed be the case---some of the time. But it's more than frugality that seems to dictate the idea.
On-point sets requires some kind of half block. Most of us today use unpieced triangles to frame on-point blocks or we might piece half blocks. (We draft a pattern for half blocks rather than cutting a block in half---you'd lose an inch in your seam allowance!)
Album quilt once in the Milne collection.
Probably Maryland about 1850.
But in the past they thought nothing of cutting across an ink-inscribed applique wonder.
The quilts we are talking about with the partial blocks are not set on point (Southern upland quilts after 1880 rarely set on point.)
Ebay quilt sold from North Carolina
These are not cut down from their original size either
as they often have a border along the edge.
The look may be one common solution to the problem: Pattern of a certain size, quilt of an incompatible size.
As Lenna said: "I’m of the mind that it was to accommodate a certain bed or length."
Unusual configuration found in the Florida project
Seven blocks minus 3/4 of one.
Loretta: "I have always thought of a half-block as a convenience for a quilt that was meant to be used. Beds pushed against a wall would not need a full block row on the back wall side, and lots of beds would have been pushed against the walls when homes were small and rooms were multi-purpose."
Walker Sisters cabin in Tennessee, 1930s
Smokey Mountain National Park
Loretta is thinking that the half blocks would be on the wall side where you could not see them.
The Louisiana project recorded two similar quilts, the one above by Betty Meeks McKenzie (1860-1925) of Claiborne Parish. Her family thought she made it in 1883. The pattern was often set with partial blocks.
The one below by an unknown maker from a family in Shongaloo, Louisiana, about 20 miles away.
Unknown
The pattern must have been passed around; some finished five
blocks, some seven or eight.
From the book Stitchers in Time: Ozark Quilts
Not everybody cut a block in half. Salona and Emma Cornett of Arkansas
made a quilt just about the same size as the one below by adding two plain borders.
North Carolina quilt from a Jeffrey Evans auction.
Southern quiltmakers must have wanted this look. There were certainly other ways
to get a rectangular, smallish quilt out of a large block pattern---like the Cornett's plain border.
East Texas, on ebay years ago.
From Tennessee, found in the Texas project.
The actual problem directing the look may be:
What do you want to show with a bed against the wall, quilt tucked in?
Eunice Lawrence, Logan County, Kentucky
Michigan Project, made in Arkansas by Alice Handy Trammell (1857-1957)
Alice was born a slave in Magnolia, Arkansas
Rather than the half block hidden along the wall Alice's partial blocks may have been designed to show on the front of the bed.
Unnamed woman, Photo by Jack Delano Greensboro, Alabama
1941, Library of Congress
If one put a plain border on the side of a quilt one would have
nothing to see on the side of the bed.
This is just a theory but quilts as bedding are a cultural response to the architecture of the bedroom. Southern cabin architecture and interior style would seem to invite a different way of looking at the bed and its decoration. Making the bed is a folk practice---influenced by commercial media, but also passed on in families.
A different aesthetic from the look in a more spacious home
of the same time period with a room devoted to sleeping and
a more impressive bed centered in the space.
Illustrated in these humorous stereo cards.
Mary Parks Lawrence's daughter Eunice with a quilt
on the bed in Logan County, Kentucky
Mary's quilt is in the collection of the Wichita/Sedgwick County
Historical Museum. Nancy Hornback discovered the photo to
go with the quilt.
But just to prove me wrong the Parks quilt is oriented with the half blocks at the foot of the bed. that's not how I would have made the bed.
Current standard for bedmaking influenced by commercial media
trying to sell us pillows, and more pillows.
