A New Round af ABCs

This week we start Round Three of ABC Wednesday. If you would like to see who else has come up with something new for the letter A, stop by and see Mrs. Nesbitt. Or join us, it's fun! You'll find the details there, too.

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I started ABC Wednesday with Round Two--A, and completed that entire round with photos from Mt. Rainier National Park. It was a lot of fun combing my photo albums each week to find the perfect photo for each letter.

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For this round I am going to concentrate on another of my passions, one I haven't devoted much blog space to, and have not had a lot of time for of late--Quilting. In my new status as a retired lady, I hope to change that time thing--and the blog space thing, too. Challenging myself to come up with a quilt block for each letter of the alphabet will not be difficult. The challenge will be that for some of these blocks I will have to make the block in order to photograph it. For A, I already have some examples on hand.

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Quilt Block names can sometimes be a very personal thing. Different people came up with similar blocks in different parts of the country, and so the same block might have several names. Several pattern companies published block patterns as early as 1880. Some were published as newspaper features. Others were passed down as templates from mother to daughter, or among members of a quilting bee.

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This is Aunt Eliza's Star. The pattern was published under that name by the Ladies' Art Company of St. Louis. This was the first mail order quilt pattern company, and as of 1895 had some 272 patterns in its catalog.

Aunt Eliza's Star was also known in other sources as Aunt Lottie's Star, Texas Star, and White Star. Here it is in a quilt of many stars that I made several years ago. I will show some of the other blocks in this quilt for other letters.

Here is an Apple block in a quilt I call Apple Irish Chain. This is a pattern I designed myself. (For another A. the leaves are Appliqued instead of pieced.)

This post is pre-scheduled for vacation. I am away from my computer, though I will have my laptop along and may find access along my way. I don't imagine I will get too much time to visit, though, so do forgive me. I couldn't skip the start of the ABCs, could I?