Introducing Noon and Night!

My first quilting pattern is available for sale in the Buttercup Made store!

The journey to this quilt pattern started in 2013 when my friend Vicki brought a quilt top to the ladies at our church to be finished. The design was scrappy multi-colored stars on a muslin background and had been pieced by her great-grandmother, Florence Aikey. Vicki had this to say about the quilt:

I believe many of the prints in her quilts were scraps from housedresses and clothes she made for my mother and her siblings when they were children in the '30s. I believe it was one of her first quilts because it remained as an unfinished top until the ladies at Mountain View Mennonite Church finished the quilting about 75 years later!! Nana went on to become a very accomplished quilter and finished dozens of them until she passed away in 1978.

For a few weeks, we had Vicki’s finished Noon and Night quilt hanging in our church’s fellowship hall. My friend Margaret and I—Margaret is one of the “quilting ladies” at our church and an avid quilt historian—stood there one Sunday looking at the quilt and trying to figure out the name of the block. She had never seen it before, and she’s looked at a lot of quilts over the years.

I went home and started researching. I went down lots of rabbit trails. As it turns out, that block is called “Noon and Night” and is attributed to Laura Wheeler (a fictitious designer of quilt blocks in the 1930s and 1940s). The block had been published in the Kansas City Star in the mid-1930s. Because it relied on templates for its construction, however, it fell out of favor in the era of rotary-cut, geometric quilt designs. About a year ago, I decided to see if I could design and write a set of instructions for cutting and piecing the quilt that didn’t rely on templates.

This quilt is the result. After much experimentation, I decided to re-create it in reproduction feedsack prints on a black cotton background. All the pieces are cut with a rotary cutter and ruler, and while the construction is a bit unorthodox, the stars come together beautifully in a 10” block. I chose to go “controlled scrappy” rather than use the original light-and-dark layout that gives the block its name. Each star has a center diamond composed of a single print. The other elements in the block are scrappy, in keeping with the quilts of the Depression era.

This has been a long and fascinating journey and now I get to share the results with other quilters. The regular price of the pattern is $10.00, but for the next week, it will be on sale for $8.00. The pattern includes instructions for making the quilt in four sizes from lap to queen. The design is scrap-friendly and fat-quarter friendly, and although it was inspired by a 1930s block and fabric, it looks great in modern prints as well. I hope you’ll enjoy making it as much as I did!