World's Fair quilt block

May 7, 1933-The World's Fair quilt was originally made with blue and white gingham and plain white fabrics.  Nancy Cabot explains that it was "specially designed and named after the World's Fair of 1893" and commemorates the Colombian Exposition.  She felt it would be "equally attractive, however, in other colors."

I wanted to use gingham in this block but all of mine had polyester in it and I melted it right away! I decided blue cotton was a better choice.


This is another easy block to make. You need to make eight four patch blocks that finish at 1 1/2" and eight half square triangle blocks that finish at 1 1/2". Here's how the parts lay out-

The World's Fair quilt block can be found in Electric Quilt's BlockBase as #H034.

An antique block can be seen at the Spencer Museum of Art but the color placement is different. Looking at this antique block leads me to believe that the drawing of the block in the Chicago Tribune is drawn incorrectly and should have been drawn as the antique block is constructed because when you layout several blocks as you would in a quilt, the pattern doesn't fit together.  If you look carefully at the quilt layout below, I think you'll see the problem areas.  It's most noticeable in the diagonal rows that are primarily white.  Of course I didn't notice this until after I made my block but maybe it doesn't matter just for a sampler.  It is after all how she presented it.  It would be interesting to see her pattern for using this block and if she corrected the error.

An old pattern, not Nancy Cabot's, can be seen here.  The pattern is quite interesting to read.  It is from 1895 and is four pages long.  I don't understand the color placement though.  The pattern has you cut out triangles of the same fabric and sew them back together as a square.  Could it be a typo back when they really used typewriters?  I wonder why there were so many problems writing this pattern?

Tomorrow-Mrs. Cleveland's Choice