Quilt Block Sundial, Burnsville NC
Posted by: 
arby101ca
N 35° 55.097 W 082° 17.968
17S E 382757 N 3975664
The Quilt Block Sundial is unique, the first sundial based on a quilt block design pattern. This is one of over 150 Quilt Block designs painted on buildings on the Quilt Trails of Western North Carolina.
Waymark Code: WM96E3
Location: North Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 07/05/2010
Views: 4
In western North Carolina, there is a healthy folk art tradition of painting quilt block designs on the walls of buildings. See (
visit link) Only one of the quilt blocks is also an attractive vertical sundial. Bob Hampton came up with the idea, did the mathematics for the gnomonic design and Martin Webster did the graphic design. Jeff Phillips installed the dial on the south facing wall of the Yancey Commons Times Journal building on Friday, March 19, 2010, exactly 100 years after standard time zones went into effect. On Saturday, March 20, 2010 it was dedicated, the National Quilting Day and the first day of spring.
The design is a bold, colorful and attractive quilt block pattern with many interesting sundial details. The polar gnomon points to Polaris and the big dipper pointing to the north star as they were at the first dawn Yancey County, Dec. 29, 1833. There are three time scales for local solar time, eastern standard time and daylight savings time the clock times include a longitude correction and use the the graph of the Equation of Time traced by the purple hills along the bottom of the dial.