Block · Nine-patches
Jacob's Ladder
Five four patches and four half-square triangles in a nine patch: chains of small squares on the diagonal, like the rungs of a ladder.
- Other names
- Jakobsstige · Stepping Stones
- Known from
- USA, most sewn 1890–1920
- First known print
- Marie Webster's book of 1915, with a picture of a blue and white Jacob's Ladder.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Brackman no.
- 1695
- Family
- Nine-patches
- Difficulty
- Medium · Triangles, geese and other angles cut with a ruler
- Grid
- 6 × 6 cells
History
The name is from Genesis, where Jacob dreams of a ladder up to heaven, and in 1915 Webster called the quilt one of the most striking with Biblical names: "bold and rather heavy", but a good example of a pieced quilt. It is not in the Ladies' Art Company's catalogue of 1898.
Barbara Brackman writes that it was most popular in 1890–1920, and that in 1929 Ruth Finley called the same nine patch Underground Railroad. The name Jacob's Ladder is also used for another block, Railroad Crossing. The museum in Lincoln has an Amish one from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, from 1930–1960 and one from 1980–1995 by Mary Maxtion of Boligee, Alabama.
How it is used
The block is a nine patch of five four patches and four half-square triangles. It is sewn patch by patch, the four patches quickest from strips.
Brackman calls it a simple nine patch that can be shaded and set in many ways. With the light and dark pieces all one way the chains run across the whole quilt on the diagonal, and the ladder only shows when the blocks stand together.
Quilts with the block
Jacob's Ladder
4 × 5 blocks · 54" × 66"
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.
- Book Marie D. Webster: Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915)
- Article Barbara Brackman: 1862 Battle Hymn (2011)
- Article Barbara Brackman: Civil War Quilts: Underground Railroad (2011)
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Jacob's Ladder, Amish, Mifflin County, 1930–1960
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Jacob's Ladder, Mary Maxtion, 1980–1995
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Underground Railroad Quilts?
- Article Sarah Ives, National Geographic: Did Quilts Hold Codes to the Underground Railroad? (2004)