Gram's Quilt, 1978, California

If you read the previous blog entry about the Stacked Bars quilt, you would know that it was inside one of the two boxes that arrived on Saturday. Here's what was in the other box. I'd like to call it a wool sampler, but a couple Facebook friends said they would call it "folky" or folk art applique. I wouldn't call it that, either, so for lack of better terminology I'm calling it Gram's Quilt.

See? Gram 1978. It says what it is, even if what it is isn't clear. Yes, it is an applique- but it's also pieced. So it's not one or the other, it's both. The designs are very simple, streamlined, and homogenous. When I saw the quilt, I felt the designs most likely came from a commercial source such as a published pattern or kit. Thus, calling it folk art never would've occurred to me. So, Gram's Quilt it is!

It's also not all wool, as I first thought. Some of the shapes are made of double-knit polyester, and the back is a panel made of two pieces of double-knit polyester.

So, after hearing other opinions I'm still inclined to call it a sampler. Even though the shapes repeat, no two blocks are the same, and the traditional definition of a sampler quilt is one with no two blocks that are the same. I guess it boils down to your definition of "same". Are two fish the same because they're the same shape? Or are they not the same because one is orange on red facing right, and the other is red on green facing left? What would you call this quilt?