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Quilt Notes: CARDINAL'S HAT and ECCLESIASTIC (4/19/1935) are titles attributed to this block by Nancy Cabot, but which she later reproduced in her column in the Chicago Tribune as MONK'S PUZZLE (9/29/37). Cabot's comments for CARDINAL'S HAT are the most interesting, the peaked white area is the hat and the hexagon the face beneath it. Notice the subtle 3D sense in Cabot's design choices and as illustrated above, with light and dark manifesting vaguely as sunlight and shadow.
Cabot mentions that MONK'S PUZZLE was a popular tiling pattern, but it needs to be shortened on one side, right or left to accomplish that as a block, see the abbreviated pattern illustrated above left, and its tessellation below. Notice that the design is made up entirely of hexagons, up and down, and side to side, an interesting attribute, because at first not at all discernible.
For more "monkish" or contemplative designs at this site, see MYSTIC STAR,
and
LABYRINTH, also HOMESPUN BLOCK (resembling St. Teresa's of Avila's "Interior Castle") and BIRDS IN THE AIR. For an illustrated book on geometry in art as the ultimate spiritual path, see THE MYSTIC SPIRAL: JOURNEY OF THE SOUL, by Jill Purce, along with other recommended BOOKS, focusing on the history and appreciation of geometric quilts.
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MONK'S PUZZLE
