Sneak Previews: Four Finished Tops

Grandmother's Choice top

Georgann Eglinski

We have 17 blocks to go so we are about 2/3 done with the 49 blocks. The model makers who have been good enough to apply their particular perspectives to the 8-inch block sampler are almost all done with their tops.

To give you some ideas we have some sneak previews. Above the corner of Georgann's top. She made 2" finished four patches to set as cornerstones with 2" strips between the blocks with a 5" finished border. She did not do all 49 blocks---if she didn't want to do the applique she just didn't do it. (You can follow her example.) She used 36 of the 49 blocks.

Grandmother's Choice top

Becky Brown 

Becky is making two tops, one for each granddaughter. She calls this one the purple top and it has green setting and borders with stars in the cornerstones. She's just Photoshopped the border on here. We'll give you the pattern for the stars soon.

Grandmother's Choice top

Becky Brown

This one is the green top, which is sashed and bordered with big plum-colored chintzes from my Moda collection Lately Arrived From London.  Like Georgann's the sashing strips finish to 2".

Grandmother's Choice top

Dustin Cecil

You probably noticed Dustin's blocks seem all over the map colorwise but he had a method in his madness. He's created a medallion by color blocking. Very innovative!

As we get into June and July we'll give you setting patterns for the three with sashing between the blocks.

32. Mr. Roosevelt's Necktie

Mr. Roosevelt's Necktie 

By Becky Brown

A little over a century ago Theodore Roosevelt was running for President again. Elected Vice President in 1900, he became President after an anarchist assassinated President William McKinley in 1901. Re-elected in 1904, Roosevelt retired after seven years as President in 1908, but he missed the spotlight after a term out of office. When the Republican Party refused to nominate him in 1912 he formed a third party, The Progressives, nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.

A Progressive Party Campaign Bandana

Roosevelt was interested in women's rights and had written his senior thesis at Harvard University on "Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law," but he concluded it was impractical, writing as President in 1908, "Personally I believe in woman's suffrage, but I am not an enthusiastic advocate of it, because I do not regard it as a very important matter."

Rival Robert LaFollette courted the women's vote,

 pushing Teddy into declaring his support. 

Here Miss Insurgency simpers and Fighting Bob sulks

By 1912 six states permitted women to vote in Presidential elections so Roosevelt decided women's suffrage was now important, making a grand gesture at the Progressive Party convention by asking a woman, social worker Jane Addams, to second his nomination. The party platform included a plank endorsing votes for women.

Jane Addams was known for her advocacy for women and children.

Roosevelt lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson but he did win two states (California and Washington) where women could vote.

  

Teddy shouting "Woman Suffrage Forever"

We can recall his Presidential campaign, the first with a promise of Votes for Women with this block Mr. Roosevelt's Necktie, named in Clara Stone's pattern catalog about 1910. It's BlockBase #2534.

Mr. Roosevelt's Necktie 

By Georgann Eglinski

 This cutting method is a variation of BlockBase  #1129.5, which eliminates the Y seams.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block (12" Block in Red)

A - Cut 12 squares 2-1/2" (3-1/2").

B - Cut 4 squares 2-7/8" (3-7/8").

Cut with 1 diagonal cut to make 2 triangles. You need 8.

C - Cut 1 square 3-3/8" (3-5/16" to be a little more accurate for the 8" version.)  (4-3/4").

Mr. Roosevelt's Necktie 

By Dustin Cecil

Another way of cutting and shading

Jo Tokla 

Campaign bandana with a different necktie

31. Tinted Chains: Click

Tinted Chains by Becky Brown

"The fact is women are in chains and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it." Susan B. Anthony, 1872

Anthony realized that the fight for women's rights required a change in women's attitudes before there would be any social change. A century later Ms. Magazine created the code words "The Click," to define that flash when a woman realizes the psychological chains that have governed her self-image, role, and behavior. In Ms.'s first issue Jane O'Reilly wrote about "The Housewife's Moment of Truth," when the traditional husband/wife roles finally catch up with the reality of two working parents. 

The first issue of Ms. 

Spring 1972

That article's success led publishers Gloria Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebrin to create a section where women described their self-defining "clicks." Susan B. Anthony would probably have been pleased.

Cartoon by Merle DeVore Johnson

1909

Tinted Chains is a way of shading a familiar pattern of squares to create a directional design, given that name in the Chicago Tribune's Nancy Cabot quilt column of the 1930s 

(BlockBase # 2815c)

Here I've taken the basic repeat and given you measurements for the 8" & 12" blocks. That BlockBase number is #2775b; the pattern is Unnamed.

Tinted Chains from Cookie'sCreek

Shade the fabrics to get the vertical effect.

 Cutting an 8" Finished Block
12" in Red

The blue measurements are for the 8" block,  slightly larger when the BlockBase default is set to 1/16".
A - Cut 2 squares 2-7/8". (3-7/8").

 Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 4 triangles.

B - Cut 1 square 5-1/4". (5-3/16") (7-3/16")

Cut with 2 diagonal cuts to make 4 triangles.

C -- Cut 5 squares 3-3/8".  (3-5/16") (4-3/4")

Tinted Chains by Becky Brown

Becky emphasized the verticality of the design with a  directional pillar print.

Twisted Chains by Dustin Cecil

Dustin shaded it in a whole different manner.

Woman, the light of the home, is a human generator creating a reading light 

and a breeze for her relaxing husband with her activity

in this 1879 Punch cartoon.

Tinted Chains by Georgann Eglinski

30. Broad Arrow: Prison Garb

Broad Arrows by Becky Brown

Emmeline Pankhurst arrested in 1914

The British WSPU made good use of the idea of repeated arrests for civil disobedience. Prison was not a deterrent to women who used images of jailed ladies for shock value, hoping to wear down  Parliament's anti-suffrage stance.

Women's Social and Political Union founders

Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in prison garb

Prison was a horrible experience for well-bred women: the food, confinement, hygiene, abuse and---to hear it from some---the wardrobe. British prisoners were identified (not by stripes as in the U.S.) but by "broad arrows" a triple line stitched or painted on their coarse clothing.

A photo of a prisoner in a cell in Holloway Women's Prison?

---most of the photos of prison garb were made outside jail. 

Jailers knew the value of propaganda photographs. 

Cameras were not permitted inside.

The Broad Arrow became a badge of honor worn by women who'd endured imprisonment.

 Pankhursts and the WSPU 

marching with Broad Arrows on staffs

Artist Sylvia Pankhurst designed a brooch, a literal badge of honor for ex-prisoners, by backing a broad arrow enameled in purple, green and white with a portcullis, the medieval gate that is the traditional symbol of Parliament.

 That symbol became important enough that she featured it on the cover of her history of the movement The Suffragette.

It remains a symbol of the WSPU, here on the historical marker for the London offices.

Broad Arrows by Becky Brown

You can see a similar Broad Arrow in a patchwork design first published in Farm Journal about 1940.

 The magazine showed four blocks together creating a tessellated all-over design.

 BlockBase #1439

shows four blocks rotated.
#1392 Double T is close to the block here, as is #1394 Cactus Flower.
If you want to re-size look at both of those so you get all three patches.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block (12" in Red)

A - Cut 3 squares 3-1/8" (3-3/16" if you use BlockBase's 1/16" inch default). (4-1/2")

B - Cut 2 squares 3-1/2". (4-7/8")

Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 4 triangles.

C - Cut 1 square 5-7/8" (5-13/16") (8-1/2")

Broad Arrows by Georgann Eglinski

Broad Arrows by Dustin Cecil