The Mystery of the Walk Around the Mountain Quilt Pattern
I find one of the most frequently searched items on my site is for this pattern mentioned in Alice Walker's short story, "Everyday Use".
"Everyday Use" is a wonderful story about what we value and why. In this story the sister who has gone off to college has a new interest in the family quilts as valuable heirlooms. Her mother had offered them to her when she went to college but she had refused them as old fashioned; now she wants them. Meanwhile the other sister who stayed home has been promised the quilts as a gift to use when she gets married. In the end the quilts go to the sister who will give them 'everyday use'.
In the story one of the quilts is a Lone Star Quilt while the other is called Walk Around the Mountain. My article at History of Quilt Patterns: A Quest for Their Stories points out that most patterns have several names and often a single name refers to more than one pattern. In my search for the Walk Around the Mountain pattern I have not been able to find it either on the Internet or in any of my many quilt books.
I asked about it on a quilt history forum and others there had not been able to find the pattern either. Some thought it might have been the Around the World pattern. It could also have been a regional name, family name or even possibly a fictional name. In her "Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilts" Barbara Brackman lists a quilt called, "Walk Around" which is make up of diamond patches just at the Lone Star Quilt. But even the name Lone Star Quilt has been given to many quilt patterns not just the eight pointed star make of diamonds that we most often think of when we see that name.
So what is the lesson to all this? To me it is to realize quilt pattern names are varied and personal. Or as Barbara Brackman puts in the introduction to her encyclopedia, "The right name for a pattern is what you call it." If we get fixed on finding the exact pattern mentioned in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" we have lost the whole point of the story.
"Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns" by Barbara Brackman
"This Old Quilt : A Heartwarming Celebration of Quilts And Quilting Memories "
a collection of quilt related stories including "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker.