Dixie Rose

Block from a North Carolina quilt

The North Carolina Quilt Project discovered several unusual patterns, including this applique design, which local tradition called the Dixie Rose.

Quilt by an unknown maker, mid 19th-century.

Quilt date-inscribed 1855

made for Laura Brown McCallum, Robeson County, North Carolina

The only two versions of the design discovered so far are in these two North Carolina quilts, one

a sampler signature quilt, one a repeat block and both look to be sashed with cording.

A 1910 novel name "A Dixie Rose"

We don't know what Laura McCallum and her friends called the design. The term Dixie Rose is quite a Southern tradition, but seems to be found more towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th as a given name for Southern babies, etc.

Grave of a woman born in 1924

When Terry Thompson and I started making Civil War commemorative quilts twenty years ago we were quite taken with the pattern and featured a couple of reproductions in our books.

Judy Davis made this one from a pattern I drew,

echoing the use of  fussy-cut paisley cones for the leaves and border

in the quilt at the top of this page.

A simpler version by Ilyse Moore

from another of my patterns.

Terry did a block for her Southern Memorial Quilt.

And designed a variation for her

book Four Block Quilts

Most of these patterns are out of print and hard to find but the pictures may provide inspiration.

Print this out at 200% for a rough 16" pattern.

Here are links to the files at the North Carolina project on the Quilt Index.

Laura McCallum's Sampler:

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4B-82-D02

The repeat block version was once attributed to Sarah Williams but in the book North Carolina Quilts the caption says unknown maker. (See the quilts in book plates 3-14, 5-1, 5-2.)

A post I did several years ago.
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/08/northern-lilysouthern-rose-block-6.html