Block · Stars
LeMoyne Star
Eight diamonds meeting in the middle: a star known in quilts as far back as the 1790s.
- Other names
- Le Moyne Star · Lemon Star · Eight-pointed star · Ottetakket stjerne · Lemoyne-stjerne
- Known from
- USA and Britain, from the late 1700s
- First known print
- The Ohio Farmer printed it in 1894 simply as "Star", and the Ladies Art Company called it "Eight Pointed Star" at about the same time.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Brackman no.
- 3735
- Family
- Stars
- Difficulty
- Hard · Curves and skewed angles, cut from templates
- Grid
- 4 × 4 cells
History
The star of eight diamonds is in the borders of a medallion quilt of 1795, made in what is now West Virginia, and in a medallion of 1806 in Delaware. Barbara Brackman writes that the star goes back to the 1700s. An example of 1837 by Clarissa D. Moore has stencilled designs between the stars.
The first printed names were plain: Star and Eight Pointed Star. The names Star of LeMoyne and Lemon Star are on one of Carrie Hall's blocks from the early 1900s.
How it is used
The diamonds are 45°, and the corner squares and side triangles are set in with Y-seams, so the block asks for precision. It is used alone as a block, in rows, from scraps or in the border round a medallion, and it is the basic form of Lone Star.
Quilts with the block
LeMoyne Stars
3 × 4 blocks · 52" × 66"
Related blocks
Sources
The text is our own, written from the sources below. Photos of old quilts with the block are in the museums' collections.
- Article Barbara Brackman: Stars Simplified: BlockBase #3735 (2014)
- Museum Spencer Museum of Art: Carrie A. Hall, Star of LeMoyne or Lemon Star block
- Book Barbara Brackman: Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns (1993)