American Beauty

quilts
A jagged black line runs through them.

Years created: 2008-2011?
Piecing technique: hand
Quilting technique: hand
Summary: This is an old one, so old that I’m unsure of the date. I know that I made it in the first few years after I was married. Micah and I were on a date in the coffee shop at Barnes and Noble, where I was browsing the quilt pattern books. I was taken by this one, the “American Beauty” pattern by Evelyn Sloppy from the book 40 Fabulous Quick-Cut Quilts. I had one of my notebooks with me and jotted down some info about the block and the overall concept of the pattern–it was long before 2012, when I got my first smartphone with a proper camera. When I got home, I sketched it all out and mocked up a pattern with colored pencils. I stuck to the original pattern’s cream, red, and black colors and shading. Years later, I found the book it was in again by chance, at a used book sale, and bought a copy. I only have a this one photograph, graciously sent by the friend to whom I gave it many, many years ago. This is one of the few hand-pieced/hand-quilted quilts for which I have a picture.

A quilt lying on a bed. It has a background of red and cream diamonds which alternate out from the center, resembling a log cabin. Each red section has line of black blocks which follow the diamond but zig-zag jaggedly across it. While the sections might initially appear to be one color each, there are subtle variations in each color palate. 3 shades of cream, 2 of black, and 2 of red. A sketch of the same quilt pattern photographed on an angle. It is made in colored pencil and pen with the red log cabin type shape and the jagged black skinny zigzag along it. The cream is represented by an uncolored background. A sketch and notes for the quilt pattern. 48 blocks of 9-inch squares. 6 by 8 blocks. Sketches of the individual blocks with and without colors. Cream has notes for fabrics from 3 patterns, red has one solid and one patterned, black has one solid and one patterned. There are lists of squares to cut for each color, either 3.5 or 4 inches, depending on whether they’ll be cut into half-square triangles for combination with other colors along with calculations for how much fabric it will use. A very similar quilt placed under the label American Beauty and attributed to Carmen Christian, 2004. The reds and creams are both a little oranger than in the version I made and there is more patterning in the whole thing, breaking up the blocks in a way my quilt doesn’t