Joseph’s Coat is a fairly challenging pattern, and it’s also one of my all-time favorite scrap quilts. There is no date on this pattern, and I can’t read the date on the original envelope. Alice Brooks was another name used by Needlecraft Service, Inc., the same company that published Laura Wheeler patterns, so it was probably published in the 30s.

A couple of years ago, I purchased about 800 vintage petal shaped quilt pieces on ebay. The quilter probably planned to make either a Joseph’s Coat or one of the other Orange Peel type patterns. I suspect she may have used sample swatches, although they seem a little large at 2″ x 6″, because there are no exact duplicates, and some of the patterns appear in different colorways. It’s a fabulous collection, but there are fewer yellows than the other main 30s colors, which is annoyingly common in these lots of old quilt pieces. The fabrics were clean, so all I had to do was starch and re-cut them with a new template. In one of my books there is nice old Joseph’s Coat quilt with a pink background, but I think I just like a plain white with all these colors.

I got it into my head that I could machine stitch this pattern, so I made a sample block. It’s okay, but I prefer hand stitching curves, and this is going to sound weird, but I like the way hand stitching looks. You can just make out the little stitches, and it has a soft look to the seams that appeals to me. Anyway, I’m ripping out this block, but at least you can see how it’s going to look one of these days.