Card Trick

About this block

This block has a documented modern origin, rare for patchwork: quilt historian Barbara Brackman's own reference credits its design to Jeff Gutcheon in the 1970s, published in McCall's Needlework and Crafts magazine, with his wife and co-author Beth Gutcheon also active in quilt publishing at the time. It arrived during a broader revival of quilting as an art form in the late 1960s and '70s and was considered a strikingly modern design when it debuted. Built from half-square and quarter-square triangles arranged into a nine-patch grid, it creates the illusion of four overlapping, layered cards, and despite its modern debut, its color placement traces back to the much older Ohio Star block, so the "trick" of the design is really an optical variation on much older bones. It also goes by the name Winning Hand.