25 Old Appalachian Quilt Patterns and What Each One Really Meant

Every quilt block a mountain woman pieced had a name, and most of those names carried a story. Meemaw Ruby Mae walks through 25 old Appalachian quilt patterns and what each one meant to the women who made them: the Log Cabin's red center, the Wandering Foot that mothers wouldn't put on a son's bed, the rose quilt that told the neighbors how your family voted, and a real 1839 Kentucky quilt with coffins stitched into it. You'll also hear about her mother's 1949 Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt pieced from feed sacks, quilting frames that hung from the kitchen ceiling, and the quilting bees where a month of work got done in a day. THE 25 QUILT PATTERNS 1. Nine Patch 2. Log Cabin 3. Grandmother's Flower Garden 4. Double Wedding Ring 5. Bear's Paw 6. Drunkard's Path 7. Flying Geese 8. Churn Dash 9. Jacob's Ladder 10. Whig Rose 11. Rose of Sharon 12. Sunbonnet Sue 13. Dresden Plate 14. Wandering Foot (Turkey Tracks) 15. Rail Fence 16. Crazy Quilt 17. Trip Around the World 18. Ohio Star 19. Star of Bethlehem 20. Grandmother's Fan 21. Bow Tie 22. Tree of Life 23. Snowball 24. Friendship Quilt 25. The Graveyard Quilt Have a quilt your mother or grandmother made? Write her name and the year on a cloth label and stitch it to the back, while someone still remembers. Tell me in the comments what pattern your family's quilts were, and what state you're watching from.