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Patterns Highlighted by Cuesta Benberry About Pine Cone Quilts
 From early to late twentieth century, the Pine Cone quilt was popular among southern African American quilters. Notable examples have been found in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Kentucky, Florida, and Arkansas. Held in high esteem as a masterpiece work, the Pine Cone’s position in the black quilt community was analogous to quiltmakers during the same era. Yet the Pine Cone was not an exclusively black-made quilt. Specimens of this same pattern made by white quiltmakers have surfaced. White quilters’ versions, known as the Target or Bull’s Eye, usually have southern origins and have been found in Texas, Oklahoma, and North Carolina. Quilt history expert Kathlyn Sullivan believes that black people continued to make Pine Cone quilts long after the majority of white quiltmakers ceased fabricating these novelty works.¹ The Pine Cone is also called the Pine Burr by blacks, especially in Alabama. A woman, China Grove Myles, who was associated with the black cooperative the Freedom Quilting Bee, Gees Bend, Alabama, attained national recognition and legendary status for making the Pine Burr quilts. Widespread newspaper coverage resulted in people all over the country seeking to buy one of her Pine Burr quilts.
 The patches of Pine Cone quilts are small squares folded into triangles sewn down on only one side, a similar construction to mainstream American quilters’ patches known as “prairie points.” The folded triangles placed in ever widening concentric circles are sewn to a base. Thus there are hundreds, even thousands of tiny triangles giving a three dimensional effect to the whole. Because of the total weight of so much fabric sewn onto the top, the finished quilt is extremely heavy. Whatever the color scheme adopted for the top, whether all print, all plain, or a mixture of print and plain, it is almost impossible to make a non-spectacular Pine Cone quilt.
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