This quilt, made by an African American quiltmaker in the rural Deep South, features a Blazing Star variation set in a repeated block pattern. Such a quilt demonstrates that African Americans used commercially available patterns in fairly convention ways, rather than always improvising. Bryant humorously titled her piece The Pain Quilt, perhaps as commentary on the difficulty of precisely piecing together all those triangles.

Title: 
The Pain Quilt
Pattern: 
Blazing Star variation
Maker: 
Lydia Bryant
Circa
1997
Made in
Tuscaloosa
Alabama
United States
109.5
89
IQM, Robert and Helen Cargo Collection
2000.004.0015