Quilt Notes: T QUARTETTE (looking like KIMONO patterns) was published in the Chicago Tribune in the summer of 1934 by Nancy Cabot. The name borrowed from a musical "quartet" but with the French spelling, like the Italian "quartetto." Cabot says in her column:

"'T Quartette' made its bow to the quilt world fifteen years ago in the hills of Tennessee. It is an unusual treatment of pieced blocks that is quite unintentionally modern. A clear Dutch blue and white formed the color scheme used in the original coverlet; it is one that is ever crisp and clean looking."

For more on Cabot's inclination toward the "modernism" of her time, see CUBE LATTICE and its affinity for clean clear colors, as if it were a Mondrian. In construction, compare T QUARTETTE with DARTING BIRD.

This illustration takes the block more toward a vehicle for scraps. But Cabot has a point because the block is also a tessellation, where the same design in positive and negative, foreground and background swap places with each other, and that effect works best with solid colors and crisp contrasts. Blue by the way is the last color the human can discern before the light goes white, and therefore the two colors offer great contrast possibilities.

For other designs at this site with multiple fabric scraps in the tiling pattern, see:
BIRDS IN THE AIR, also SHIFTING CUBES and the gorgeous OLD MAID'S RAMBLER.