Lena T. Leigh, a seamstress in Warrenton, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., assembled this quilt top in the early part of the 20th century. One-inch hexagons of a wide variety of print and solid cottons were pieced into 5½-inch rosettes, each separated by a single row of red cotton hexagons. Perhaps the many examples of period cottons were scraps from her dressmaking business.
Lena Malorn was born in Fauquier County, Virginia in 1878. In 1900, she married Thomas Leigh, born in England in 1876. She died March 26, 1946 and is buried in Arlington Cemetery, Virginia.