Nancy Page: “Indian Trail”

Found within the vintage newspaper ads and patterns I own were a few clippings from the Nancy Page Quilt Club. The Nancy Page Quilt Club published a syndicated weekly 2-column quilt pattern in the 1930s. The column was written by Florence LaGanke.

Indian Trail

This column was published in The Sunday Sun (a Baltimore newspaper) during early 1930s.

The Nancy Page Quilt Club members looked at the new quilt with interest. “Oh, I know what that pattern is called. My mother calls it Indian Trail.” “Oh, no, Peggy, my grandmother calls it ‘Rambling Road.’” “You call that Rambling Road, Martha? Why no, that’s ‘Weather Vane.’”

Nancy smiled. “You know,” she said, “that Finley in her excellent book on quilts says that this pattern boasts about as many name changes as any pattern ever pieced. She says she has heard it called Indian Trail, Forest Path, Winding Walk, Rambling Road, Rambling Rose, Climbing Rose, Old Maid’s Ramble, Storm at Sea, Flying Dutchman, Northwind, Weather Vane, Tangled Tares, Prickly Pear, Irish Puzzle.” How’s that for a collection? At any rate everyone who looked at it felt that it was a pattern that was going somewhere. No one called it “Quiet Pastures” or “Sleeping Sun.”

It needs to be made up in white and a small white and black print, or white combined with one other material, possibly a red and white print or a blue and white. I should think it could be made up with white and one of those black and white prints that are so evenly balanced in black and white that they look almost gray….

This pattern was available for 3 cents and a SASE to The Sunday Sun.