Saturday, September 26, 2015

Bowties? or Snowballs?


Sometimes a quilt can be more than one pattern, and this wonderful 1970s polyester quilt is a good example. Depending on how you look at it, the quilt could be called either a Bowtie or a Snowball quilt.


If you're a stickler for details, the block is Bowtie and the secondary pattern, Snowball. In other words, each unit is a bowtie block, but when the blocks are put together, they form a secondary pattern-- a white snowball in the negative space.


The quilt came from an eBay seller in Jacksonville, Florida, and it is 70" x 83 & 1/2". It is all hand quilted, and notably, under $50. A similar quilt was offered to me a couple years earlier by a well known quilt dealer for the "friendly" price of $1650. (ouch!)


This quilt is part of an eye-opening group of barely-vintage quilts, currently on display in  "Modern Materials, Quilts of the 1970s" at the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon. For more information about the exhibition, location, hours,  and other venues showing quilts during Quilt County 2015, click here.

1 comment:

  1. There are lots of patterns like this that look similar from arms length but are constructed differently. The "real" snowball construction is so much easier than this bowtie quilt!

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