Just hexagons, no shading pattern
BlockBase #160a
In trying to find a quilt for every pattern BlockBase I got fixated in the hexagons. There are so many things you can do with them. We will begin with the simplest. They are all the same quilt, just shaded differently, and they are all BlockBase #160.
The first is hit or miss---No repetitive shading pattern....
Published names from Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns
Hexagon
Honeycomb
Mosaic
Century
Poor Boy
Hit or Miss
#160a From about 1880-1900
Random shading
Hexagon quilts with no plan tend to be
the utilitarian versions, like the early 20th-century tied comforter above
or polyester double-knit below.
Below BlockBase#160b--shaded in stripes
Mid-19th century
Godey's Lady's Book showed this shaded stripe in 1850 but didn't give it a name.
Quilt dated 1877 with the name pieced in:
"Honeycomb Centre"
About 1900
Farm and Home magazine called it Variegated Hexagons about 1890
About 1870-1890
About 1910 above and below
Date inscribed 1821, Emeline D Ellery.
This early strip quilt in the collection of Historic Deerfield
has alternating strips of rosettes and stripes. See more here:
More about rosettes later.
A quilt shown at the Paducah Rotary Show two years ago from
Mary Kerr's collection has a lot in common with the 1821 Ellery quilt.
160c Ocean Wave, about 1890
The strips of light and dark could wobble back and forth.
British author Averil Colby called this undulating arrangement
Ocean Wave.
Rayons-mid-20th-century
From East Tennessee, early 20th century?
Case Antiques
A couple of decades later, same idea.
Hex on the Beach, a recent quilt
by Tula Pink.
Colby showed a few of these shaded patterns she called Ocean Wave but not many Americans tried it.
Yet.