Block · Pictures
Maple Leaf
A leaf of squares and half-square triangles in a nine patch, with a stem on the diagonal in one corner.
- Other names
- Ahornblad · Leaf · Blad
- Known from
- USA and Canada, from the late 1800s
- First known print
- "Maple Leaf" is in Marie Webster's list of 1915. Field Guide to Quilts names an earlier version in Clara Stone's Practical Needlework (1906), which called it Maple Leaf or Magnolia Leaf.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Family
- Pictures
- Difficulty
- Medium · Triangles, geese and other angles cut with a ruler
- Grid
- 3 × 3 cells
History
The same nine patch has been seen as many kinds of leaves. Barbara Brackman writes that pattern designers called the variations tea leaf, poplar leaf, magnolia leaf and maple leaf, and Webster has both Maple Leaf and Tea Leaves. So the name tells what people saw in the block, not where it came from.
The museum in Lincoln has Maple Leaf quilts from 1880–1920, and according to Field Guide to Quilts the Kansas City Star printed the pattern in 1935.
How it is used
The block is a nine patch of plain squares and half-square triangles with a stem sewn on the diagonal in the last patch. It is cut with a ruler.
In autumn colours, a new fabric for each leaf, it is a classic scrap block. The leaves can all face one way, as if the wind takes them, or four by four turned round a centre.
Quilts with the block
Medallion with four Maple Leaves
Medallion · 5 rounds · 39" × 39"
Maple leaves
4 × 5 blocks · 49½" × 60"
Maple Leaf kaleidoscope
4 × 4 blocks · 42" × 42"
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 Field Guide to Quilts: Foliage & Tree blocks
- Article Barbara Brackman: Civil War Quilts: Dixie Tea (2011)
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Maple Leaf, 1880–1920