Doves in the Window quilt block

Doves in the Window

July 8, 1933-The Doves in the Window or Four Birds quilt block dates "back to the early eighties and is a product of the New England states," wrote Nancy Cabot about her block of the day eighty years ago.

The Doves in the Window block is both a bird design and a star design though it may be a little hard to see in my block.

The birds are formed by color placement within an eight point star that is composed all of diamonds.

There's an article about the Doves in the Window block here where you can see the drawing as Nancy Cabot presented it in the Chicago Tribune. It shows the eight point star construction.





I was not able to find any blocks or quilts constructed the way Nancy showed her block. Her "wings" are longer.  This antique quilt at Max and Louise Pattern Co. is an example of shorter "wings."

In making my 6" block, I eliminated several of the diamond pieces.  It seemed silly to me to make the bird body from four diamonds sewn together so I made one larger diamond. These are the parts I used for my paper piecing pattern-

The section in the upper right hand corner shows the pieces needed to make the parts shown in the upper left hand corner. So, you are basically making two different diamonds that each have two paper pieced units in them.  You make eight diamonds and set them together with triangles and squares which is shown at the bottom of the photo. The block does require set-in or "y" seams but it goes together quite easily if you make sure to mark your 1/4" seam and just sew up to it.

You can download my Doves in the Window pattern here.

Tomorrow-Sunflower