The Original quilt block

The Original

September 17, 1933-The quilt pattern for today is called The Original. Nancy explains, "Any number of quilt makers who have pieced this particular design have claimed it as an original execution of their own; the real title was lost in this shuffle of false claims."

The colors used to make The Original quilt were usually pink or rose and white according to Nancy.

This quilt design won a regional prize in the 1933 Sears National Quilting Contest. It was featured in the Sears Century of Progress in Quiltmaking booklet which can be seen here. The pattern is image 7 under the picture of the booklet. I have not been able to find any information on the name of the quilter or which region she won her prize in. I can't find any pictures of the winning quilt either.

A pattern attributed to Nancy Cabot for The Original quilt can be seen here.



This is not a hard block to make. I paper pieced my center like this-

Look at my paper piecing tutorial to see the method I use. Though I could have paper pieced the rest of the block I felt it was faster to use the Star Singles paper to make the eight 1" finished size half square triangle blocks that I needed. You just sew on the dashed lines and cut on the solid lines and you you have eight perfect half square triangles that don't need trimmed to size. Of course, you can use any method you like.

So, the basic parts of the The Original quilt block are four 1 1/2" squares for the corners, eight 1" finished half square triangles, four flying geese units that finish at 1"X2". I made my flying geese units from 1 1/2"X 2 1/2" pieces of background fabric and 1 1/2" squares sewn on the diagonal on the corners.

Here's the layout of the block-

You can load a paper piecing pattern for the The Original block here. The block can also be found in Electric Quilt's Blockbase  program as #2057.

Tomorrow-Hibiscus