Old Maid's Puzzle

About this block

This is a two-fabric block built on a 3×3 grid, made entirely from half-square triangles and cut squares. Sources give differing earliest publication dates: one traces the name to the Ladies Art Company catalog in 1897, another to the American Farmer's Magazine's ladies section in 1895. Later writers gave it several other names, including Ruth Finley's "Fox and Geese" in 1929 and Virginia Snow's "Hour Glass" in 1932, and the same underlying design also circulated as Double X, Crosses and Losses, and Cat's Cradle depending on how the light and dark triangles were rotated.