Drunkard's Path

About this block

This block is built from a quarter-circle curve set into the corner of a square, one of the earliest curved-piecing designs in American quilting, with a documented print history stretching back to at least an 1892 pattern-swap notice in the magazine Hearth and Home. It became closely associated with the Women's Christian Temperance Union in the late 1800s, who used quilts sewn in this pattern, often in blue and white, to raise money and awareness for their cause. Oral tradition also ties this block to the Underground Railroad quilt code.