Old 11-05-2008, 08:41 AM
  #10  
kanoelani
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 46
Default


It could be Hawaiian but neither the pattern used or the quilting looks like Hawaiian quilts I have seen. I am not an expert on this, but I just did not get the sense of the "islands" from it.

What it does look like is a technique used in "McCalls; The Art of Vintage Quilts" from December of 2007. They described it as a quilt designed from Pennsylvania German scherenschnitte (paper cutting). The quitmaker was from Lancaster County. Remember how we used to cut snowflakes as kids with a folded piece of paper?

Here is a description I found online:

"""""Scherenschnitte
"Scherenschnitte or scissor cuttings in the Pennsylvania German tradition, are derived from the Swiss-German technique of cutting one piece of paper in a continuous design, although the paper can be folded from one to three times for repeats in the overall pattern. Often mechanical instruments, such as compasses, rulers, punches, and awls are used. The earliest Germanic forms date from the mid-sixteen-hundreds, most of which are religious pieces.

The earliest forms of scherenschnitte came to America in the late 18th century, and were found to be mainly fancy borders surrounding handwriting samples, such as alphabets, bible verses, certificates, and love letters (later evolving into the popular Valentine). Paper was folded, then cut - when opened, it revealed a symmetrical design upon which verses were written, and then color added." Clifford Nevin (from framed example purchased in Lancaster, PA)

Not only popular amonst Pennsylvania Dutch, papercut appliqué was commonly used on Baltimore Album quilts during the 1840s and many two-color papercut blocks, often red and white, bore inked inscriptions and became friendship quilts.

While Hawaiian quilts are similarly constructed, they are characteristically a single block covering the entire top or a small number of relatively large blocks. """""

kanoelani is offline