I have been fascinated by this pattern since I first started quilting and got a copy of "The Quilters" and saw a picture of it. ( If the emotional/cultural aspect of quilting moves yu and you have not had access to this book, find it. It's out of print. But seems to have had a good circulation. I have encountered a couple of copies in used book stores here in Seattle. Search services should come up with it, too. Authors are Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Buferd. Subtitle is "Women and Domestic Art - An Oral History", Anchor Press/Doubleday 1978. Trade a sewing machine for it if you have toÖ it's worth it.)

Back to the issue at hand. After I saw the picture in the book, I was sensitized and reacted to a listing in a used quilt bulletin for a "piece of old quilt top - axehead pattern) and bought same. Subsequently, the pattern appeared in two magazines, but only as photos of completed quilts, not patterns. Someone published it in a book called "Applecore", complete with a template, a couple of years ago. I think it was good old Eleanor Burns, but I donít' have the book in my hand. That is still available.

I kept all this stuff, gathering courage to attack curved seams. Here are the pictures of what I have:

This is the picture from the book "The Quilters", cf above. In context with the book's content, this picture of the quilt in it's obviously rustic/frontier setting is a grabber.

There you have it. It's not a spectacular pattern like the fancy stars and stuff, but it appeals to me and I want to give it a try.

Captain Dick

 Once I posted the material above, there was a lot of interest in the pattern, and I offered to supply a limited number of templates and instruction packets. Here is some material regarding same:

See post re pattern:

"Subject: Axehead Quilt Patterns, and what I'd like to do with themÖ

@#$%^&*

So much for making axehead patterns.... I made several, decided on which one
I liked best and made a plastic template. Cut some sample pieces and sewed
them together per the Quilting in the Heartland book. YIKES!!! Lumps,
foldovers, uglies! Tried again, more carefully... better but marginal.

Gave up... called in the sewing equivalent of the Navy Seals. She, of
course, looks at what I'm doing and says, "Of course that won't work, it's
uneven." It is not uneven! It is exactly according to plan! She (note
I am not using names here) then grabs a piece of yellow tablet paper and a
pencil, goes "sketch, sketch, sketch" and says, "Is that about what you
want?" I am forced to say "yes". She then takes another piece of paper,
lays the first over it and cuts a second one. She proceeds to draw a 1/2"
seam allowance on them and somehow overlaps them on the window (using it as
a light table). (Note, this 1/2" seam allowance produces a 1/4" seam
allowance in the finished product... DON'T ASK!!) "Hmm", she mumbles. "a
little wide here, sketch, sketch, a little narrow Here, scribble, scribble.
"There!" Now she folds them funny and decides they are OK, hands them to
me and says "try this."

So, I cut four axeheads to her pattern, pin and sew them, and end up with a
perfect four unit piiece of an axehead quilt, with the axeheads to the
proportions I wanted...

I am still sitting here at my desk, madly cutting axeheads and folding them,
trying to figure out what is going on, because I swear there is not ONE
essential difference in what I did in the first place and what she did
(other than the fact that hers works and mine doesn't). WAH!

So, I have now produced a plastic template of "Ann's Axehead" (ooops,
there's the name). Oh, well, you'd have guessed anyway. I tell you, that
woman is so scary Stephen King won't come out of his house when she's in New
England...

The Captain

and here is a picture of the test block. Figuring out the actual measurement for quilt planning is tricky, but it is roughly a 9" square for a four patch "block", which seems to be the best way to visualize it. Here is the test block I made with Ann's pattern. In visualizing the final proportions of a blade, remember that the outside edges of this sample will lose 1/4" all round, or on two sides of each blade. This will narrow the waists a bit.

.

Now here are my calculations: I am shooting for a finished quilt of 100" x 96"Ö simply edged, no border. This will require 132 "blocks" as above. Each block requires 4 axes, so you will need 528 axes, or 264 each, light and dark. Better figure on cutting 275 each, to allow for goofs. You can get, with care, get 8 axes to a FQ. If you are willing to have 8 repeats of a fabric in a scrap quilt of this dimension, you will need 35 FQ's each of dark and light. Needless to say, if 8 repeats is too many for you, you are gonna need a lot of FQ's! All of these figures are rounded off. You would have to do your own exact calculations for your size. In doing mine, I tried to do a bit extra, to allow for the shrinkage that occurs with quilting. Somehow, I usually manage to come out wrong on this and end up with quilts that are too narrowÖ and you know who and her cat get the lion's shareÖ

Dick 4/9/01