Hourglass

The unit is old. The International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, has two Dutch medallion coverlets from about 1790 and from 1795–1800 with fields of exactly this unit, and the museum calls them Hourglass. From the USA it has an Hourglass from 1880–1900 in which the hourglasses alternate with plain squares.

The name has belonged to at least three different blocks. The Ladies' Art Company called a square in a square with strips round it Hour Glass, the paper Wallace's Farmer used the name for a four patch block in 1929, and according to Barbara Brackman the Kansas City Star was the first to use it for four quarter-square triangles, in 1932. Marie Webster has the name in her list of 1915, but without a drawing. Museums also sometimes call a quilt of hourglasses Broken Dishes, like one from 1883 in Lincoln.

A special example is a quilt of silk and velvet from the 1880s at Newfields in Indianapolis, possibly made by Irene Sheridan. Barbara Brackman has written about it as a possible mourning quilt.

The hourglass is a half-square triangle divided once more: two half-square triangles laid right sides together, sewn and cut along the other diagonal give two hourglasses. Four hourglasses, every other turned, give Big Dipper.

Set side by side, the hourglasses make zigzags and stars across the quilt. With a plain square between them they are calmer, as in the quilt from 1880–1900.