Orange Peel

Orange Peel is one of the oldest American block patterns. Brackman knows at least a dozen surviving quilts in fabrics of about 1800–1830 and dates the pattern "after 1820 or so", not to the 1700s. The examples include a brown and white quilt from Connecticut, one in the museum in Lincoln from 1820–1840, one from Delaware dated 1840 and one from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia from 1825–1850.

The name was printed when the Ladies' Art Company sold the pattern for ten cents around 1890. Ruth Finley called it Melon Patch in 1929, and the same year Ruby McKim made it Lafayette Orange Peel. The name Lover's Knot, which it is sometimes given, belongs in the 1898 catalogue to another pattern of octagons and squares.

Each square has an oval in the middle and two corners, so the seams are curved: the curves are cut from a template and sewn with pins at the middle and the ends. The ovals can also be appliquéd onto the square.

Swapping the colours of the oval and the corners from block to block turns it into circles in two colours. The Virginia Quilt Museum writes that in other colours the pattern is called Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, like the chequered circles of Drunkard's Path.