Deep Dive Tangent: Exploring the 1934 Cleopatra's Fan Block

Happy Tuesday, my Lovelies!  Today's post is a break from the Lo & Behold Deco quilt I've been working on (just four more rows to stitch together before that's a finished quilt top!), but we're not veering into totally unrelated territory.  Brittany of Lo & Behold Stitchery, who designed my Deco quilt pattern, says she was inspired by the Art Deco style of the 1920s-1940s in 2019, when she realized that we we were coming up on the centennial anniversary of this iconic design movement (and all of the dizzying cultural, social, and technological transformations that happened during its heyday).  

Despite the great number of surviving quilts dating to the 1920s-'40s, not many of these quilts reflect the Art Deco style that was dominant when these quilts were being made.  Perhaps that reflects who was (and who wasn't) making quilts during those years and what sewing and quilting symbolized at that time -- a traditional female domestic activity and not something the giddy modern flapper girls were excited about.  Were the "Modern Girls" of the 1920s and '30s too busy exploring new social and economic opportunities outside the home, working in shops or factories during the day and dancing their nights away in jazz clubs, challenging traditional Victorian gender ideals (and giving their mothers plenty to worry about as they stitched more traditionally styled quilt blocks by the fire)?  ;-). That's my theory, anyway.  Sometimes I just make things up as I go along.

In any case, we don't have a great many examples of the Art Deco style influencing quilters in the surviving vintage quilts from the period, but we do have some and the Cleopatra's Fan design is one of my favorites.  I'm taking you on a Deep Dive into the Cleopatra's Fan block today, because I own (but have not yet used) the AccuQuilt GO! 12" Cleopatra's Fan BOB (Block On Board) die (this post contains affiliate links) and I'm trying to decide whether to actually make a quilt with it -- or just rehome my die to someone else who will use it!

52 x 69 Cleopatra's Fan in Kaffe Fassett Collective Prints, 12 inch Blocks

Above is a Cleopatra's Fan quilt rendering that I created in my EQ8 Quilt Design software using Kaffe Fassett Collective print fabrics with coordinating solids.  I've said it before and I'll say it again -- my Electric Quilt software is the best value for the money of any quilting tool I own, including my Bernina sewing machine and my long arm!  With most of my quilts taking multiple years from the time I cut into fabric until I finish the binding, the ability to experiment with design ideas and see what a quilt would look like in the actual fabrics I'm considering ahead of time saves me from sinking time and money into quilts that disappoint me when they don't turn out looking as great as I imagined when I pulled those fabrics at the quilt shop.  So, in that rendering above, these are 12" finished Cleopatra's Fan blocks just like my 12" AccuQuilt die will cut out for me, and those Kaffe Fassett fabric prints are to scale as well, so the design rendering is actually giving me a pretty good idea of how those large scale botanical prints will look when they are cut into the actual size patches of these blocks.  Do I like this enough to make it?  I haven't decided yet; we'll circle back to that at the end of the blog post!  Next I want to explore the original Cleopatra's Fan pattern as it was published in 1934 in the Cincinnati Inquirer by Laura Wheeler Designs (note that "Laura Wheeler" was one of several fictitious byline used by a New York City pattern syndication company that also went by many different names; you can read more about the company on Barbara Brackman's blog here):

Cleopatra's Fan Pattern Attributed to Laura Wheeler Designs, First Published in 1934

Up until fairly recently, the vast majority of quilts were designed and made as bed coverings rather than as wall hangings or throws.  Just to give you some context, here's an example of "modern" Art Deco bedroom furniture from a 1934 advertisement.  (I was unable to find a source attribution for this image but will update in the future if possible):

1934 Ad for Art Deco Bedroom Furniture

Isn't that fun?  And now, can't you just imagine this vintage Cleopatra's Fan quilt (below) on the bed in the magazine ad, with the sleek radiating curves of the quilt block's piecing lines echoing the radial seams in the headboard's veneer?  You may need to zoom in to see that on the photo if you're reading this on your mobile phone.

Vintage Cleopatra's Fan Quilt circa 1940s, Augusta Auctions

This is actually the first Cleopatra's Fan quilt I ever saw, an image from Augusta Auctions that I stumbled across on Pinterest years ago.  I was intrigued because I'd never seen the block before and the auction house didn't identify the quilt pattern in their auction description.  They just dated it to circa 1940s based on the fabrics.  

Here's a close up of the quilt blocks, where you can see that all of the seam lines and angles in the original block were authentically reproduced in my AccuQuilt Cleopatra's Fan BOB die:

Detail of Vintage Cleopatra's Fan Quilt from Augusta Auctions

The AccuQuilt die even has little notches on the curved patches to make it super easy to piece the block accurately either by hand or by machine.  Fast cutting, easy piecing -- what's not to love, right?  Here's the only other photo of a vintage Cleopatra's Fan quilt that I could find, similar to the one from Augusta's Auctions.  Both quilts follow the suggested block layout shown in the Laura Wheeler pattern illustration, and both combine a multitude of colorful prints (likely a mix of feed sack prints and garment scraps) with unifying solids.  The Augusta's Auction quilt uses several different solid fabrics (coral, yellow, greens, and some blocks combine multiple prints without using a solid fabric at all) whereas the quilt below uses the same saffron yellow solid for all of the quilt blocks and a different shade of solid yellow for the border.  Perhaps the original yellow-gold fabric was unavailable by the time the maker had her blocks assembled and was ready to purchase her border fabric.

circa 1940s Vintage Cleopatra's Fan Brought to Ann Quilts for Repair

This yellow-with-prints Cleopatra's Fan quilt was brought to antique quilt expert Ann Wasserman for restoration in 2014.  Now, Ann is someone who literally wrote the book on vintage quilts, yet even she was unfamiliar with this pattern and hadn't seen a quilt like it before.  Think how many vintage Dresden Plate quilts have survived from the 1930s and '40s, yet I was only able to find TWO images of surviving quilts made from this pattern during the Art Deco era when the pattern was first published!  If YOU own a Cleopatra's Fan quilt that dates back to the '30s or '40s, please share it with me!  They don't even have a single example of Cleopatra's Fan in the International Quilt Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and they have the largest publicly owned quilt collection in the entire world.

Original Cleopatra's Fan Block from Laura Wheeler Finished at 9 3/4"

So, clearly I am interested in this quilt pattern.  Why then am I still on the fence about making a Cleopatra's Fan quilt with my AccuQuilt die?  Zoom in on the newspaper advertisement in the left photo below:

Photos Credits: Martha Dellasega Gray, qisforquilter.com + Kate Smalley, tracingthreads.com

Scale, Scale, SCALE, People!!  We are confounded by the design principle of SCALE!  Per the newspaper clipping at above left, the original 1934 Cleopatra's Fan block was drafted for a finished block size of 9 3/4".  This was long before the advent of rotary cutting tools and the imperative for designers to work within the parameters of so-called "ruler-friendly measurements."  The quilters of 1934 who mailed off ten cents in stamps or coins (coins preferred!) for their copy of the pattern would have received either templates or paper patterns that they could paste to thicker paper to create templates, and they would have just traced around the templates -- marking the actual stitching line -- and then eyeballed their quarter inch seam allowances as they cut around the drawn lines with scissors.  The odd block size of 9 3/4" finished would either have been dictated by the desired finished size of the bed quilt (probably Full/Double mattress size), or else the block size was adjusted to fit whatever page size the templates needed to be printed on for all of these patterns they were mailing out.  In any case, my concern on discovering this was that a Cleopatra's Fan quilt made with my 12" AccuQuilt die might not channel the vintage quilt vibe as well as I'd hoped, due to the larger scale of the blocks.  

And I get why AccuQuilt would go with that larger block size.  These cookie-cutter type dies are expensive, and by enlarging the block to 12" AccuQuilt owners are able to get more use out of the die by combining it with other 6" or 12" blocks, or with any of the component dies included in their 12" Qube sets.  Another advantage of the 12" block size is that larger fabric patches can better show off some of the beautiful large scale print fabrics we have today, like my stash of Kaffe Fassett prints that I wanted to use for this quilt.  Anna Maria Textiles and Tula Pink's fabrics would also be great for these block sizes.  But another downside is that a larger block size means that fewer blocks will fit in a quilt of a given size, reducing the total variety of fabric prints I could feature, and the larger patch sizes of the larger block will limit the use of scrap fabrics to relatively large pieces.  Hmmm...  Decisions, Decisions!

Robert Kaufman's Cleopatra's Fan Block Finishes at 11 1/2"

But there are other options out there for making this quilt, so let's take a look at a few of them for comparison.  First up, there is a FREE Cleopatra's fan pattern that Robert Kaufman fabrics put out in 2014 as a PDF download and you can get that here.  

FREE 82 x 88 Robert Kaufman Cleopatra's Fan Pattern available here

My one (BIG!) beef with Robert Kaufman's version is that they are crediting someone called "Ramona Rose" for designing their Cleopatra's Fan and slapping a 2014 copyright on it.  I think we can all agree this is flagrant plagiarizing, taking a lesser-known historical quilt block design, doing a mockup in modern fabrics, and trying to pass it off as an original, new design.  True, we don't really know which employee at Reader Mail/Needlecraft Service/Old Chelsea Station designed this quilt block and published it under the Laura Wheeler byline eighty years before your pattern was published, but we can be confident it wasn't your Ramona Rose.  Shame on all of you!  Rant concluded.  

The Robert Kaufman pattern gives you templates (with 1/4" seam allowances included) that you can trace onto template plastic for making the quilt.  Far more tedious and time consuming to trace around template shapes over and over and then cut each shape individually with scissors, so the AccuQuilt die wins on Ease and Speed of Cutting!  The finished block size is not stated in the Robert Kaufman pattern, which is unfortunate because makers are therefore unable to check whether their first "test" block has finished at the correct size before proceeding with the remaining blocks, but with this type of one block quilt one should still be successful as long as one is consistent that all blocks are finishing at the same size, whatever size that first block turns out to be.  Based on my math (assisted by a layout mockup in EQ8 software), I think their block size is drafted to finish at about 11 1/2".  Kind of odd but again, with these on-point layouts, it is more challenging to get your quilt to finish close to the size you want it for today's Queen or King beds when you are working with 12" blocks.  One more row makes the quilt too wide or too long, and one less row makes the quilt too narrow or too short for the bed.  We don't know whether the original Laura Wheeler pattern called for borders or whether those two vintage quilters decided to add borders to their quilts independently as was conventional for most quilts at that time, but if we subtract enough 12" blocks to add a border we have even fewer fan blocks in our quilt and the proportions of pieced blocks to borders starts to look off.  So the Robert Kaufman free pattern is definitely a way to make this quilt if you have more time on your hands than money to invest in the project, but my goal is to find a better option than the AccuQuilt die I already own, so I kept looking.

Inklingo Cleopatra's Fan Available as 4 1/2", 6", 9", or 12" Block

My next option for making Cleopatra's Fan blocks comes from Inklingo, an innovative small business that sells PDF files for a variety of quilt blocks in a range of sizes that customers can print at home.  I've never tried their products but I know other quilters who use them and love them.  At $30, the Inklingo Cleopatra's Fan PDF is more expensive than the free Kaufman pattern (obviously) but a lot less expensive than the AccuQuilt die I already purchased.  But the file isn't just a pattern that you print out on paper.  Inklingo takes the advantages of old-school template piecing but streamlines the prep work significantly by eliminating the step of making and tracing around templates over and over again for hours and hours.  It's a really cool idea that you can read about here if you're not familiar with Inklingo.

Inklingo Cleopatra's Fan Available as 4.5, 6, 9, or 12 Inch Blocks

Basically, you iron your fabric to the shiny side of freezer paper sheets just as you would do for many appliqué techniques, but then you feed the whole sheet of fabric laminated with freezer paper into your inkjet printer, press Print, and then out pops a sheet of perfectly traced and marked shapes of exactly the right size, grain line going the ideal direction, and laid out with as little fabric waste as possible, ready for you to cut apart with scissors and/or rotary cutter so you can get to the sewing part right away.  Best of all, Inklingo includes markings to indicate the actual seam line, not just the cutting line, and that's why users can be confident that they will have no trouble sewing up their Cleopatra's fan blocks even if they go for the smallest 4 1/2" block size.  

Isn't that awesome?  I really appreciate that both the stitching lines and the seam intersections are so clearly marked and would love to try this method for hand or machine piecing.  So, why have I not already purchased, downloaded, and started printing Inklingo Cleopatra's Fan pieces yet?  Alas -- we have three or four different printers in this house already, but not a one of them is an inkjet printer.  Inklingo warns on their FAQ page against using laser jet printers with their products due to the risks that freezer paper could damage a laser printer and/or that the toner used in a laser printer (chemically different from the ink used in an injet printer) may not wash out of the fabric when the quilt is finished.  I would have to buy -- and sacrifice counter space in my sewing room for -- a dedicated inkjet printer in order to make a quilt using the Inklingo system.  

However, if I already owned an inkjet printer and had not already purchased the AccuQuilt Cleopatra's Fan die, I would definitely be trying some Inklingo blocks at the 9" size closest to the scale of the original pattern.  Again, EQ8 gives me the superpower advantage of seeing how much of a difference it makes to the look of the finished quilt depending on whether the blocks finish at 9" or at 12".  In the EQ8 rendering below, I've created a 52" by 65" throw sized quilt using the 9" Cleopatra's Fan option from Inklingo:

52 x 65 Cleopatra's Fan Throw Quilt with 9 Inch Inklingo Blocks

Compare that to the EQ8 design rendering I used to kick off today's blog post, using the 12" block size of my AccuQuilt GO! Cleapatra's Fan BOB die.  Both versions of this quilt would finish at 52" wide and there's only 4" difference in length between the two.  I've scaled the photos to the exact same pixel width as well, so when you look from one quilt to the other you are really seeing as closely as possible what these two throw quilts would look like side by side, made up in the same fabrics, with two different block sizes:

52 x 69 Cleopatra's Fan Throw Quilt with 12 Inch AccuQuilt Blocks

See what I mean?  Both quilts are pretty, but in different ways.  The larger block scale feels more current and contemporary, whereas the quilt made up in the same modern Kaffe Fassett prints with the original 9" block size retains more of the vintage appeal of those antique quilts that caught my fancy in the first place.  Another difference I see, since EQ8 is scaling those fabric prints to display accurately according to the block size I'm using, is that I can see a lot more of each of these large scale prints better in the larger block size.  Let me explain that another way: the fabric collections in the EQ8 software contain the information about the size of the fabric repeat, so EQ8 knows that a particular image of fabric represents an 8" x 8" piece of yardage or whatever.  So if I use that fabric swatch to "paint" a patch of fabric in my quilt that is an 8" x 8" square, then EQ8 will completely fill that square with the fabric image.  But if I'm using that same 8" x 8" fabric swatch to "paint" a patch of fabric in my quilt that will measure 16" x 16", EQ8 software automatically tiles that fabric repeat in a 2x2 grid to fill that space instead of stretching the 8" x 8" swatch to twice it's size.  Does that make sense?  So especially when you have big, splashy prints in your stash that you're nervous about cutting into because you can't quite envision how it will look sewn into a block, EQ8 can give you the confidence to go ahead -- or warn you to step away from the rotary cutter! -- before you cut into that fabric for real.

I do have one beef with EQ8 today, though, and that is their failure to include a decent representation of the original Laura Wheeler Cleopatra's Fan block in their Blockbase+ collaboration with Barbara Brackman.  This is the only block in my EQ8 Blockbase library (see below) that is called Cleopatra's Fan, correctly dated 1934 and attributed to the right sources, but look how they changed the block!

EQ's Weird Blockbase+ Cleopatra's Fan at 9.75 Inches (original scale)

Why on Earth would they do that?!  They have changed the angles of the diagonal seam lines within the block, which dilutes and diminishes the Art Deco appeal that I love about it, and they have also eliminated a seam and made a more rounded "flower tip" patch (light blue patch, upper right area of the photo above) that would need to be pieced either with a curved Y-seam construction or as an appliqué.  Per the original pattern description, the block design is meant to represent a palm LEAF fan, not a flower: "Cleopatra herself once used palm-leaf fans as graceful as these that adorn this striking quilt..."  I don't mind EQ including this version of the block as a variation, but I wish they would have included the original block design as well.

There is a FREE EQ Cleopatra's Fan project file available for download on the Inklingo website here, and that is what I used to create my different scaled renderings in the software.  Note that this is an EQ7 project file that can only be opened within EQ software version 7 or 8, and won't do you any good if you don't have the EQ software.  The Inklingo drafted Cleopatra's Fan block is much more faithful to the original quilt design.

Of course, once you have your quilt block ready to go in EQ software, whether you selected a block from the hundreds included in the software's Block Library, imported the block already drafted for you in a project file like I did with Cleopatra's Fan from Inklingo, or use the tools in the software to draft a completely new block to your liking, you can play around with all kinds of different block layouts and color combinations.  I snapped this photo of a bicycle in a shop window that caught my eye a few weeks ago because I liked the paint colors:

Random Bicycle Photographed in Shop Window, Reflection of Rebecca's Feet

I really liked those shades of red and violet together so I tried to map them out to Kona Solid fabric colors and played with them in EQ8 a little bit.  In the rendering below I have four Cleopatra's Fan blocks sewn together, radiating out from the center to form larger Maltese Cross like blocks with the illusion of fancy shaped sashing.  I tried to use a background fabric similar to the putty color of the bicycle's tires:

EQ8 Cleopatra's Fan Design in Bicycle Colors

And here's another iteration of that, changing up the color placement slightly, deepening the purple fabric and lightening the background fabric for a slightly different look:

Another EQ8 Cleopatra's Fan Design in Bicycle Colors

Then I really got out of hand and started mixing in other quilt blocks with my Cleopatra's Fan blocks.  The quilt design below was not practical with the 12" AccuQuilt block size because it was calculating a finished size of 120" x 120" (and we are not making quilts for Paul Bunyan or the Jolly Green Giant over here).  I couldn't get the length shorter than 120" with the 12" blocks without eliminating rows of the quilt, which spoiled my design.

91 x 91 Cleopatra's Fan + New York Beauty Design

Switching the block size from 12" down to 9" (just a couple of clicks in the software) showed me that I could create this quilt exactly as I'd envisioned it with a 9" block size, yielding a much more useful 91" x 91" finished bed quilt size.  I LOVE this design, but I won't be making it any time soon because I'm feeling burned out on solids from my Deco quilt right now.  I gotta get me some prints to play with again after this!  Stonefields pattern and Tilda print fabrics, I am looking at YOU!  

Thanks for letting me get all this off neatly recorded on the Internet for my future reference.  I can now dispose of the dozens of little scraps of paper and Post-It notes about Cleopatra's Fan that were littering my desk and refocus on finishing my Deco quilt top.  That was my goal for March, wasn't it?  It's definitely my goal for this week, and this week is half over already!  ;-)

I'm linking up today's post with my favorite linky parties:

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Musings at Songbird Designs  

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt  

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

 TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework