Grandmother's Fan

Two of the quilts in the Rankin collection were made by hands other than Dorothy or Stan. The other, the Drunkard’s Path quilt, was sewn in the 1920s.  This quilt, which dates to around 1935, was made by a family member—possibly Dorothy’s mother or grandmother. Both the pattern, the Grandmother’s Fan, and the fabric, date this to the era of the Great Depression. Also typical of that economically depressed era was the use of a flannel sheet as a filler rather than batting, a technique which this quilt employs. 

The blocks of this quilt each contain a wedge, or fan, made of thin strips of solid or calico cloth, in varied colors. The top and bottom of the quilt are cream colored cotton. There are 42 blocks, six across and seven down. There is no border. Each fan was sewn together into a piece and then applied to the quilt.  The fans are all composed of 6 strips of fabric.  At the bottom of each fan is an inverted cone of colored fabric.  The cone of fabric is the same in each vertical column: blue, purple, green, pink, yellow, red (left to right) with a few exceptions. Each of the blocks of the quilt are set at the bottom of a stitched diamond shape inset into the square block. 

The colored fabric of the fans is characteristic of feedsack material. Grain vendors sold feed in pretty calico sacks so that it could be used in farm homes for aprons, children’s clothing, and quilts. Crazy, scrap, Grandmother’s Fan, and Dresden Plate quilts all use up small pieces of fabric which might otherwise have been useless. 

The Grandmother’s Fan was first published in a Ladies Art Company catalog in 1897.  Before that, fans were used in Crazy Quilts, but not as isolated motifs. Some scholars believe the fan motif became popular as a result of japonisme, a late 19th century fascination with Japanese culture.