Wild Women

Call them wild, call them crazy, yet no one could deny these were women of courage! The file includes all patterns for these 4 designs - make individual wallhangings, or mix blocks as desired. Finished block size: 13.5 x 18".

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977): French-born author of Catalan, Cuban, and Danish descent who became famous for her erotica and for her diaries, which span more than sixty years, beginning when she was eleven years old and ending shortly before her death.

For many years, Anaïs Nin maintained a double life as a bigamist. Her first husband was Hugh Guiler, a banker and artist, whom she married as a young woman in the 1920s. Rupert Pole, whom she married in 1955 while still married to Guiler, was a forester and the step-grandson of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Both men were apparently unaware of Nin’s double life and did not meet until after Nin’s death in 1977. After the death of Hugh Guiler in 1985, the unexpurgated, or uncensored, versions of her diaries were commissioned by Rupert Pol.

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603): With a childhood full of political intrigue, it was assumed that Elizabeth would never become queen. But she did, and as queen managed for a time to quiet her Catholic population with acts of tolerance, promote government reforms, strengthen the currency, and forward the growth of a capitalist economy. Highly educated, she also turned her court into a great center of learning. Elizabeth’s foreign relations were uneasy. Always pressured to marry to form political alliances, she diplomatically seemed to consider it, but in the end always refused. Her greatest success was the defeat of the invading Spanish Armada in 1588 in the waters off England’s west coast. Her greatest failures were the suppression of uprisings in Ireland and her long wars. During Elizabeth’s colorful 45 year reign, England became a strong European power, a vibrant commercial force, and a place of intellectual accomplishment. The “Elizabethan age” rightly was one of England’s most fascinating eras.

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (1832 - 1919): An unconventional woman, she was a proponent of women’s rights and dress reform. In 1855, she became one of the earliest female physicians upon graduation from Syracuse Medical College. She married Albert Miller, a fellow student, in a ceremony that did not include a promise to obey; she did not take his name, and to her wedding wore trousers and a dress-coat. Neither the marriage nor their joint medical practice lasted long.

At the start of the Civil War, she volunteered with the Union Army and adopted men’s clothing. She was at first not allowed to work as a physician, but as a nurse and as a spy. She finally won a commission as an army surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland, 1862. While treating civilians, she was taken prisoner by the Confederates and was imprisoned for four months until she was released in a prisoner exchange. After the Civil War, she became a writer and lecturer, usually appearing dressed in a man’s suit and top hat.

She was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for her Civil War service, in an order signed by President Andrew Johnson on November 11, 1865. When, in 1917, the government revoked 900 such medals, and asked for Walker’s medal back, she refused to return it and wore it until her death two years later. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter restored her medal posthumously, making her the first woman to hold a Congressional Medal of Honor.

María Eva Duarte de Perón (1919 - 1952): Evita, as she was known, was the second wife of Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974) and the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952.

Born out of wedlock in rural Argentina, at age 15 she made her way to the nation’s capital of Buenos Aires where she pursued a career as a stage, radio, and film actress. Married to Colonel Juan Perón in 1945 she became involved in Argentine politics in 1946 shortly after Juan Perón’s first election as President of Argentina. Over the course of the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the Pro-Peronist trade unions. Eventually, she founded the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, and the nation’s first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party. In 1951, Eva Perón expressed a desire to be allowed to run for the office of Vice-President of Argentina. In this bid she received great support from the Peronist public, or descamisados. However, opposition from the nation’s military and elite, as well as her declining health, ultimately prevented Eva Perón’s candidacy. In 1952, shortly before her death, Eva Perón was given the official title of “Spiritual Leader of the Nation”.

Various sources and scholars claim that Eva Perón was the most powerful and important woman in the history of her nation], while some claim that at the time of her death she was the most powerful woman in Latin America.