The Improved Nine Patch A very popular 20th-century pattern Particularly in scrappy pastels with white ovals between the nine patches There is no square block. It's BlockBase #306. Today we call it Improved Nine Patch or Glorified Nine Patch. The first name was published in the Rural New Yorker in February 1930, pretty early in the 1930s quilt revival. Most of the quilts were probably made from this 1933 Kansas City Star design. It takes some piecing skill for the curves but quilters were crazy about Double Wedding Rings at the time so this design of similar construction fit right in. Although someone at the Star thought this would be a good beginner's quilt in 1935. The Quilt Index has quite a few Lulu Schock from the West Virginia Project & the Quilt Index. Including some two color variations. From the Indiana Project & the Quilt Index. Mary E. Garrett worked in a clothing factory and made hers out of factory cutaways---shirt chambrays. All these look to have been pieced after the pattern appeared in 1930. I had BlockBase draw a pattern to fit on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. Print this out for a 6-/12" circle. You might want to turn it into a block. Dolores Hinson published it this way in her 1978 book A Quilter's Companion and Quilters Newsletter sold templates for this block about the same time. UPDATE: I found a block-style pattern, probably the earliest published in Comfort magazine, maybe in the 1920s. Hammock Quilt Block Merikay Waldvogel let me photograph Mildred Dickerson's scrapbooks of patterns and this drawing by Mildred (?) shows it with a different name than we'd use. Templates might be the answer. Fons & Porter sell some here: http://www.shopfonsandporter.com/product/Glorified-Nine-Patch-Template-Set/fabric-and-notions Or just go to eBay and buy a quilt. Dated 1965 And by the way, any nine patch could be improved with polka dots.
