Block · Stars
Lone Star
One great star of many small diamonds in rings of colour: a masterpiece that has filled whole quilts since the early 1800s.
- Other names
- Star of Bethlehem · Betlehemsstjerne · Ensom stjerne
- Known from
- USA, from about 1800; as one great star on a plain ground from the 1880s
- First known print
- According to Barbara Brackman the pattern was first printed around 1900. "Star of Bethlehem" is in Marie Webster's list of 1915.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Brackman no.
- 4005
- Family
- Stars
- Difficulty
- Hard · Curves and skewed angles, cut from templates
- Grid
- 6 × 6 cells
History
Large eight-pointed stars of diamonds are found in quilts from about 1800. In 1820–50 they were often framed with chintz and appliqué, especially in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and the Carolinas. From the 1880s the great star stood alone on a plain ground, especially in southeastern Pennsylvania.
The most common printed name is Lone Star; others sold the pattern as Star of Bethlehem, and in the 1930s it could be bought as a ready-cut kit. A "Mathematical Star" was popular at the Baltimore fairs of 1851, but Brackman stresses that nobody knows what it looked like.
How it is used
Each of the eight points is a grid of small 45° diamonds, and the colours run in rings out from the middle. The points are joined with Y-seams, and the corners and sides are set in afterwards. It is one of the hardest classics, and the star often fills the whole top.
With one diamond per point it is LeMoyne Star.
Quilts with the block
Lone Star
1 × 1 blocks · 50" × 50"
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: Lone Star (2014)
- Article Barbara Brackman: Meanwhile in Boston (2014)
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Star of Bethlehem, Baltimore, c. 1830–1850
- Book Marie D. Webster: Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915)