The Kite quilt block

The Kite

July 28, 1933-The Kite quilt block is the block featured by Nancy Cabot in her Chicago Tribune column today. Many of you probably recognize the Kite block as it is still very popular even today.

This pattern has also been called Periwinkle, Arkansas Snowflake, and Humming Bird.

Nancy Cabot wrote this interesting little tidbit about today's block, "About a century ago children in the southern and eastern states used to believe that the quilted kite would insure a happy sail to Sleeptown."

I found a copy of an old Kite quilt pattern from the Progressive Farmer called Star Kites here. There are just two pieces to this pattern and Nancy's pattern from what I can tell.




In making my 6" block, I decided to divide the large piece shown in that pattern in half to make it easier to construct by paper piecing.  Each of the four kites finish at 3".  There is just one basic paper piece template which you make four of for each smaller block.  They look like this-

You may download my Kite paper piecing pattern here. The Kite quilt block can be found in Electric Quilt's Blockbase  program as #1246.

Missouri Star Quilt Co. has a video for making the Periwinkle block using charm packs, the Wacky Web ruler and papers. I don't know what size the block ends up though.

There are examples of Kite quilts here, here and here.

Tomorrow-Yankee Charm