Block · Squares and four-patches
Plus
A cross of one fabric on a plain ground.
- Other names
- Swiss Cross · Kryds
- Known from
- USA and Canada, during the First World War; later in modern quilts
- First known print
- We have found no early print of this very block. The magazine Modern Priscilla printed a Red Cross pattern in December 1917, but we have not seen its drawing.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Family
- Squares and four-patches
- Difficulty
- Easy · Squares and rectangles only
- Grid
- 5 × 5 cells
History
We know the plain plus from Red Cross quilts around the First World War. People paid to have their names embroidered on, and the quilt was auctioned or raffled for the Red Cross. The International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, has one with red plus signs in sashed blocks from 1917–1918, one from a Sunday school class in Iowa from 1917 and one from 1918, possibly from Rutland, Vermont. In Canada too whole communities made such quilts, and in Waskatenau, Alberta, a name cost 25 cents. Cheryl Brickey and Paige Alexander name an even earlier one from Lake County, Illinois, from 1915.
The old cross names cover other blocks. At the Ladies' Art Company, Greek Cross (no. 173) is made of curved pieces, and Red Cross (no. 392) has four pieced corner squares with a wide cross between them. Carrie Hall's Greek Cross comes closest, but has triangles in its corners. Marie Webster gives the names in 1915 without drawings. We have not found Swiss Cross in historical sources.
In recent years the plus has come back in modern quilts: Jeni Baker showed a quilt of interlocking plus signs in 2010, and Brickey and Alexander have written the book Modern Plus Sign Quilts. These are examples, not an origin; no inventor is documented.
How it is used
The block is cut from straight pieces and is easy to sew. Set side by side, as in Plus, the plus signs stand with air between them; on the Red Cross quilts there was room for the names.
Quilts with the block
Plus
4 × 5 blocks · 46" × 56"
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.
- Museum International Quilt Museum: World War Quilts for Relief and Comfort
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Red Cross, 1917–1918
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Red Cross, Dorcas S.S. Class, Iowa, 1917
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Red Cross, possibly Rutland, Vermont, 1918
- Museum Founders' Gallery, University of Calgary: Quilting for a Cause: Red Cross Quilts of the Great War (2019)
- Article Sean Moir and Anthony Worman, Manitoba History 82: The First World War and the Women of Waskatenau (2016)
- Article Cheryl Brickey and Paige Alexander, C&T Publishing: The History of Plus Sign Quilts (2018)
- Book Ladies' Art Company: Diagrams of Quilt, Sofa and Pin Cushion Patterns (1898)
- Museum Spencer Museum of Art: Carrie A. Hall, Greek Cross block
- Book Marie D. Webster: Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915)
- Article Jeni Baker, In Color Order: Plus Quilt Tutorial (2010)