Hexagonal Pineapples

I'm always fascinated by patterns that never made it into print.

One is this variation of the pineapple or windmill blades design based on a hexagonal block.

Years ago I bought the quilt above in Illinois. It's pieced of wool and silk blends (delaines and challis) and each log is stuffed with a strip of batting. I am guessing it is from the 1870s. Moths have munched on the wools.

Merikay Waldvogel has one too. Here she is at the Quilters' Hall of Fame exhibit she curated when she was inducted. Hers looks to date from about 1910. It has a faux patchwork (cheater cloth) back and fat, puffy wool ties. The hexagonal blocks are set with red triangles.

Quilt dealer Laura Fisher has a top with plaid hexes in the center and just two rows of logs.

The few I've seen are wool and silk, blends but here's one that looks to be 1870s or 1880s in cotton prints. I saw it in an online auction.

The trick here is to rotate the hexagonal blocks so the dark areas line up with the darks. The hexagonal blocks are set with hexagonal plain blocks.

I don't know where I found this tiny picture.

My skills in spatial relations are sorely tested with some of these patterns.

The one I own at the top has baffled me for years.

Somehow she made hexagons with 6 different sides and rotated them so that the green side matched another green side, the red side matched another red side, etc.

I have no recommendations about where to find a pattern or how to draw and plan these.

My BlockBase program is all square blocks for a reason.

Quilt dealer Stella Rubin has 2 of these on her website now:

http://www.stellarubinantiques.com/items/161860/enlargement161860sra.html

http://www.stellarubinantiques.com/items/809797/enlargement809797sra.html

And Betsey Telford-Goodwin has a silk version

http://www.rockymountainquilts.com/files/antiquequilt_q8664.php