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The Most Popular Patterns

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Women in Colby, Kansas with a log cabin quilt, about 1900

Quilt fads come and go. The fashion for Log Cabin quilts was one of the big crazes once a national quilt style developed after the Civil War.

What were the largest fads? I thought I'd look at the Quilt Index which has 89,637 quilts posted on the day I checked.

Oregon Project
A.H. stands for Swiss-born Anna Huber (1872-1945) who married Louis Creitz
in California in 1897. Anna learned the fashions in her new country, probably stitching
this quilt while in her teens. 

The largest group of designs is the Crazy Quilt with 3,816 examples or a little above 4% of the quilts pictured there. 

Silk Log Cabin dated 1887 when silk scraps were inexpensive and
Log Cabins were the thing.

Log Cabins were next with about 3,600.

Dated 1932-1933
Grandmother's Flower Garden with about 2,000 examples



My research model here is a little flawed as I didn't look at each photo to see if it fit the definition of say a Grandmother's Flower Garden. I just took their count.

Date-inscribed 1932
Double Wedding Ring about 1900 examples

Louisiana, 1938 Library of Congress

Date-inscribed 1934

Dresden Plate, about 1900 examples



Lone Stars 1,250 examples


Fans 1,050 examples

It's interesting that these are national fashions rather than the regional popular patterns we would have seen before 1870 such as Pennsylvania red & green samplers or Charleston chintz medallions. The  national style was spread through published patterns, household advice columns, syndicated women's features and educational organizations.



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