Wishing you all a warm welcome to the Patchwork Ledger! We are so pleased to be able to share the inspiration and history behind the fabric you are creating using heirloom-quality yarns sourced from our Rocky Mountain wool producers.
This project began for me simply as a way to explore the art of quilting utilizing the skillsets I have as a knitter and crocheter, using yarn as my medium. Not being a quilter myself, this gift of taking tiny cuts fabric and alchemizing them into cohesive pieces of utilitarian art seems nothing short of magic. I loved the idea of challenging myself to take the geometry and precision of a quilt block and translating it to a pattern suited for needles and hooks. As I dove in to the deep sea of quilting designs, I was originally looking at them from the perspective of how possible it would be to execute the adaptation from sewn blocks to knit or crochet instructions. The deeper I swam, however, the more I became fascinated by the history and traditions of the designs, as well as the people who make quilts and why they make them. What started off as a technical writing project has grown into an exploration of of this craft as an art form, how it connects the maker to community, and how it can be used as a means of care-taking and celebration.
Each installation of the Making an American Heirloom features interpretations of two traditional American quilt blocks, the selection of which is inspired by an underlying theme or thread related to the blocks themselves or stories of individual people or events in which the blocks appear. In this first installation, I was moved to explore the sense of what makes the place we live more than just an address, but the place in which we feel comforted, content, and protected.
To represent that sense of place, I began looking for blocks which were named for places.I discovered that every state has a block named for it!
I found this book with templates for all 50 states. If you don’t have the energy to make a 50-block quilt, I also found a jigsaw puzzle. I’ll probably take that route.
Our first block, the Ohio Star, is one of the better known and instantly recognizable block designs. Ohio is not my place in the world, but even viewing the design as a non-quilter I knew the name. We all have a place which is important to us, whether it is the place we spent childhood, a favorite vacation spot, the town in which we went to college or started a family, or where we live right now. It’s a different place for every person, but we all have one; we know it by heart and it has played a part in shaping who we are. The geometry of the Ohio Star suggests the points of a compass, guiding even the heart of someone for whom Montana is home to feel that connection to place.
Here we see an Ohio Star on a barn in Maryland.
If you’d like to read an in-depth history of the Ohio Star block, I’d recommend reading this post on Barbara Brackman’s Civil War Quilts blog. Ms. Brackman is a highly regarded and widely published quilt historian, and I have found her work to be a great resource in understanding quilting history.
Our second block, the Churn Dash, is named for its resemblance to a butter churn.
Photo credit: Antique Butter Churn Pottery from Tom Laurus
This block and many others were named for their resemblance to or symbolization of inanimate objects which surrounded folks in their everyday lives, often tools or other items that facilitated daily life or aided in chores or food preparation. The Anvil, Water Mill, Carpenter’s Wheel, and Flower Basket are other examples.
I settled on the Churn Dash design after chatting with my friend Mary Murphy, a Ph.D. historian renowned for her scholarship on gender in the American West. You’ll have the pleasure of reading more from Mary herself in upcoming installments. From Mary, I learned that the butter which was hand-churned by women in the American West was not only an important part of the family diet, but also a means for these women to contribute to the family income or to make money for their own purses. She provided me with delightful archival records from Montana newspapers advertising the sale of butter and discussing methods for manufacture, packaging, and transport of butter in the early 1900s.
Excerpt from Rocky Mountain Husbandman, Diamond City, MT - Thursday, May 31st, 1894 (© 2026 newpapers.com)
Below we see an advertisement featured in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on May 29th, 1915 (© 2026 newpapers.com)
Mary also provided me with excerpts from Montana Historical Society interviews, which bring home just how meaningful the income generated from butter made by women’s hands could be.
This one from an interview with Merlin Matthews of Medicine Lake, MT, conducted in 1998 demonstrates the added value of making cream into the more desirable end-product of butter, facilitating the purchase of other staples:
(p. 7) Mother sold butter and eggs in Great Falls; drove the 20 miles; she took eggs and pounds of butter to Matusie’s (?) grocery. “That kind of bought groceries, you know. We did sell some cream, but not a whole lot.”
Here we learn from an interview with Magnus and Velma Aasheim (Antelope, MT, June 25, 1998) that the production of butter could not only produce income, but generate prestige and pride.
(p. 2) Mother took butter to Reserve to sell for 10 cents a pound
“And everybody . . . they saw her come, they flocked to the store to get her butter.”
Recognition of excellence at the state fair was important too!
From the Bozeman Courier, Friday, August 25th 1905 (© 2026 newpapers.com)
Another interview excerpt provides insight not only into the hard work which was daily life for ranching Montanans, but also into the at-large economic impact of the production and sale of butter and other edibles.
From an interview with Jim Bolstad (with comments by Adeline Bolstad), Homestead, MT, June 29, 1998:
(p. 7) “Back in the ‘30s, why, he raised hogs and we’d butcher as high as seven and eight hogs at a time—scalded them in hot water. . . . And my dad would cure the hams and bacons. When the Fort Peck dam was being built in the later ‘30s, he would go over there and my mother would churn butter and pint up cream, and eggs and hams and bacon, so my dad would load up a ’28 Pontiac car with all it could hold and go over there and sell it to them people that were making a living at the dam. They was the only ones that had any money.”
The homey butter churn, sturdy anvil, and other tools essential to daily domestic life were hugely important in so many ways. Their symbolic representation in stylized quilt blocks added another thoughtful layer to the physical warmth and comfort quilts provided. A quilt made with these special blocks warmed the heart as well as the body.
I hope you have enjoyed learning a little history about Ohio Star and Churn Dash squares.