Clara A. Stone: That's Not What I Meant!

BlockBase #3786

First published as Wandering Jew in the 1906 Clara Stone catalog.

Mary Margaret Watson, West Virginia.

Family name for the pattern: Water Witch.

Quilted in the 1940s.

West Virginia project & the Quilt Index.

This top, circa 1900, was probably inspired by the design in Practical Needlework.

I get the feeling when I look through Clara A. Stone's 1906 booklet of quilt patterns that the designer (whoever she was) might have been frustrated by some of the quilts she inspired. The writer seems to have intended to show traditional designs set in traditional fashion, but because the illustration conventions of the time dictated that patterns be pictured in a square box the traditional setting arrangements were forgotten.

The Tennessee project documented this variation of the pattern

dating to 1840-1860. The block is plain white with an applique bouquet.

The star pattern is in the sashing.

Quilt from the Barker family, Montgomery County, Tennessee

Stone showed two variations of this star pattern

Quilt in the pattern dated 1889

The blocks are unpieced blue calicoes, the sashing is

made of pink and white diamonds with a blue square on point.

You get the same pattern if you eliminate the box from Stone's

drawing and repeat the blocks.

Late-19th-century quilt

Leaving you a good spot for some fancy quilting with no seams to quilt across.

Turkey red and white version by Lena Glasser, Butler County, Iowa

from the Iowa Project and the Quilt Index.

You could set the blocks and sashing on the diagonal as Lena did

or on the square.

Here's a variation that looks to be about 1890-1920.

The 1930s or '40s

When Eveline Foland drew the pattern for the Kansas City Star in 1929 she knew how to picture it. I wouldn't be surprised to find that she had a copy of Stone's catalog. Stone inspired many quilts between 1895 and 1925 and then many quilt pattern designers thereafter. Cupid's Arrow Point didn't inspire many quilters however. Foland didn't seem to understand that those pink V shaped pieces at the top of the pattern were absurd.

"Clip seam" indeed.

Someone followed Foland's pattern.

Hall's block and sashing (she calls it a border) in the collection

of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas

Carrie Hall included her version of Cupid's Arrowpoint in her book Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in 1935, explaining how to set it as "an all-over pattern a bit different from the usual patchwork, since the center patch is white and the interest is in the border around it." She used the same V-shaped piece Foland pictured.

The star in a conventional block version was often made.