The show's dazzler is an album quilt patterned with 360 images of tumbling blocks, each bearing a signature written on white silk.

His collecting focused on album quilts from the Baltimore area.

As do the other two shows, the display at the Rye Historical Society includes an appliqued album quilt.

Made by one woman for her granddaughter, this one departs from the tradition of the album quilt as a collective effort of friends.

No foreign precedent has been found for album quilts, so-called because the squares they are composed of suggest the pages of an autograph album.

Even so, Ms. Peck refuses to describe the album quilt, a form that reached its zenith in Baltimore before 1850, as indigenous.

As the popularity of this quilt style grew, women far beyond Baltimore began making these album quilts.

This color scheme was popular for the album quilts of the mid-19th century.

While most quilts are composed of repeated blocks, in the album quilt every block is different, as if each were a separate little canvas.

The quilts are created as album quilts, which are collections of appliqued blocks, each with a different design.