SDS4914 Puss in the Corner Vol4 Stamp12

Four corners, one centre square — and a quilt block named after a Victorian children's game.

The Puss in the Corner block is a cheerful variation on the classic nine-patch. Four bold corner squares frame a large centre square, with lighter pieces linking them together. Look closely and you can almost see the game it is named after: four players holding their corners, and one in the middle waiting for a chance to pounce.

Puss in the Corner was a much-loved parlour and playground game in the 1800s, and it appears in 19th-century children's books such as Lydia Maria Child's The Girl's Own Book and the Boys' Own Book. Five children play: one in each corner and the "Puss" in the centre. The corner players beckon to each other and dash to swap places, while Puss tries to dart into an empty corner first. Whoever is left without a corner becomes the new Puss!

The quilt block carried the game into patchwork. A Puss in the Corner block was published in the Kansas City Star in 1930 — the newspaper whose weekly quilt patterns reached thousands of farm and small-town homes — and it has also been known as Puss in Boots.

🐾 Did You Know?

There is more than one Puss in the Corner quilt block!

Because quilt patterns were shared from quilter to quilter and through newspapers and magazines rather than one official pattern book, several quite different designs ended up with the same name. Some versions are built from simple squares and rectangles like our stamp, while others use flying-geese units to create the corners.

What they share is the idea behind the name: four corners and a centre — just like the game.

🧵 A Little Heritage

Quilters have always found inspiration in everyday life — Bible stories, politics, household objects and, here, the simple games children played. Blocks like Puss in the Corner remind us that quilts were not only practical bedcovers but also a record of the things people loved and laughed about.

We've captured this playful design as Volume 4, Stamp 12 — the final stamp of Volume 4 — completing your Volume 4 collection for the Heritage Quilt Society.