Tiny Octagons, Miniature Scale 19th Century Paper Pieced Quilt-work natural color basket very useful still as a

very useful still as a letter opener if desired

in good part for her wonderful hand-painted face

In addition to illustrations

and definitely Mi'kmaq

I would guess the painting dates to the 1920s-40s and the panel is much much older than that

Tiny Octagons, Miniature Scale 19th Century Paper Pieced Quilt-work natural color basket very useful still as aTo my eye an exquisite little thing a fragment of a larger quilt, perhaps, or perhaps its maker had had enough! The method of making here was is called English paper piecing with each shape cut from a paper template, then wrapped with fabric, yielding a perfect, sharp cornered octagon. (Much more common were hexagon quilts, typically arranged in honeycomb patterns; here, because of the octagons, and their linear arrangement, the maker interspersed