Anvil Quilt

The faded blue grid of this album-style quilt frames a repeating anvil pattern in sixteen-patch square blocks. Arranged in five horizonal rows and four vertical rows, squares and isosceles triangles tango in contrasting colors, one light and one dark, in each of the twenty blocks. Almost all of the cotton fabrics are small prints, rather than solids. The darker hues primarily feature brown, tan, blue, and orange. The quilt is both hand and machine sewn with string quilting. Knots on the quilt top secure it to cotton batting and a pink, striped back. This is one of four quilts from the Sherry Sherrod DuPree Collection (acma-06-041), which documents the history of African American Holiness and Pentecostal movements (2003.0018.0002, 2003.0018.0004, 2003.0018.0005). Notably, a variation of its cross-like pattern is called Crosses and Losses.