Here’s the pattern. It was published in the Kansas City Star on August 31, 1932.
What makes this pattern special? My grandma designed it…when she was 12. She sent it in to the Kansas City Star newspaper, who published it in their weekly quilt pattern series. Not knowing her age, they attributed it to her with ‘Mrs.’ before her name. That famous KC Star quilt series ran from 1928 to 1961. You can read more about it here. More information and a partial list of all of the KC Star patterns can be found here.
In 1986, the KC Star did a feature page on their quilt series, featuring The Purple Cross in their images.
Here is how the Purple Cross block can look in various quilt configurations. The diamond configuration was the first one I made. That is me and Grandma holding it.
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Here’s a close-up of a kaleidoscope block.
Myrtle the dog stresses the importance of testing works in progress, and proper use of finished quilts.
This was the grandma who taught me to sew really well, on her dream machine, the Singer 401a Slant-O-Matic, that I now have care of, until it’s time to pass it on to the next generation.
The Purple Cross pattern is difficult. It starts out easy, when making the stars. But when you add the circle inserts it gets more complicated, and then the corners make it even more difficult. And then when sewing the blocks together I literally almost give up completely, feeling like I really don’t know how to sew at all! It would be slightly easier to construct if sashing strips are added between the blocks. As you can see from the examples above, I haven’t done that. I like the look of the blocks right next to each other.
So anyway, Happy Birthday to Grandma’s Purple Cross Quilt Pattern! Looking forward to making more of these quilts.
And now for some music!
The Slicethelife.com song draft continues, and is now on Round 5. The Run-Sew-Read.com round 5 selection will be this weekend. What will it be? I’m still deciding. A listing of the songs in the first four rounds can be viewed here.
For Round 4 I went for fun and ornery. Here’s the post, and below the song and video. http://slicethelife.com/2021/08/22/2021-song-draft-round-4-pick-7-run-sew-read-selects-half-a-boy-half-a-man-nick-lowe/
run | sew | read 