Block · Curves
Grandmother's Fan
A quarter circle of blades in the block's corner: born in the silk and velvet of the 1880s and a cotton classic since.
- Other names
- Bedstemors vifte · Vifte · Fan
- Known from
- USA, from the 1880s
- First known print
- The first printed fan pattern appeared in Peterson's Magazine in 1885. The name "Grandmother's Fan" comes from a pattern by Joseph Doyle & Co. around the 1910s.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Family
- Curves
- Difficulty
- Hard · Curves and skewed angles, cut from templates
- Grid
- 2 × 2 cells
History
The oldest dated fan quilt in Barbara Brackman's files is from 1882–83, made in Vermont. Fans belonged to the crazy quilts of the time: silk, velvet and embroidery on a dark ground, and embroidered silk fans peaked in the 1890s.
After 1900 cotton took over, about 1905–10 four fans were set together as a wheel, and in the 1930s they were sewn in pastels. "Grandmother" was a selling name meant to sound old-fashioned: Webster's list of 1915 has Fan, Fan Patch and Fanny's Fan, but not Grandmother's Fan.
How it is used
The blades are cut from templates and sewn into an arc, laid in the corner with a quarter circle over it. Turn the blocks and the fans stand in rows, in diagonal waves or four together as a circle. Grandmother's Fan, rounded blades has rounded blades.
Related blocks
Sources
The text is our own, written from the sources below. Photos of old quilts with the block are in the museums' collections.
- Article Barbara Brackman: Fans: Myth, Style and Dates (2022)
- Book Marie D. Webster: Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915)
- Museum Spencer Museum of Art: Carrie A. Hall, Grandmother's Fan block