The first three blocks are feathered stars; the other six have eight-point stars within an eight-point star -- and they're all made from the same pattern.

Feathered Star Star of Chamblie Pine Burr Rolling Star Brunswick Star Eight-pointed Star Mother's Favorite Star The Paral- lelogram Block The Virginia Reel See also: Star & Squares 8 Hands Around (LAC) Eight Hands Around Free Trade Block

Feathered Star Feathered Star Feathered Star Prize Winning Designs 1931 Chestnut Burr/Radiant Star/Aunt Betty's Star/Snowflake This beautiful star was being made long before 1931, when it was first published as Chestnut Burr and Radiant Star in a quilting booklet called Prize Winning Designs. The name Feathered Star is from Quilts of Virginia.
Star of Chamblie Star of Chamblie Star of Chamblie Hall 1935 "An antique design brought to Canada from France in the early part of the 19th century," is all that Hall and Kretsinger have to say about the Star of Chamblie in their 1935 book The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America. In fact, Fort Chambly was built just east of Montreal in 1711, one of five built to protect French immigrants from the Iroquois Indians. It's on the Richelieu River and named for the nearby Chambly Rapids. The Brits spelled it Chamblee. Part of Atlanta has that name. We'd love to know why. We've seen several color variations of Star of Chamblie blocks, but none quite so beautiful as the example that Hall stitched up in the 1930s. We've emulated her colors at left.
Pine Burr Pine Burr Stone 1906 Pine Burr Feathered Stars typically have eight points, but there is no mistaking this one for anything else, curved center seams notwithstanding. The Pine Burr at left is from Clara Stone's 1906 booklet Practical Needlework. The Ladies Art Company published a similar block as its #492 in 1897.

Rolling Star Rolling Star Rolling Star Ladies Art Company #4, 1897 Brunswick Star Finley, 1929 Eight-pointed Star Kansas City Star 1929 Mother's Favorite Star KCS, 1940 The Parallelogram Block KCS, 1945 The Virginia Reel Danner, 1934 Chained Star/Eight Pointed Star/Mother's Favorite Star/The Parallelogram Block/Starry Field/The Virginia The Ladies Art Company made Rolling Star its block #4 in its 1897 catalog. In just two colors, it's much different from the block Ruth Finley included as Brunswick Star in Old Patchwork Quilts (1929). (Finley also called it Chained Star.) The Kansas City Star published the block three times under three different names. Aside from the (apparently) missing corners, Eight Pointed Star (1929) has half the center diamonds in one color and the other half in another. That's our take on the KCS' drawing, which uses patterns of crosshatching to indicate color. We could be wrong. Mother's Favorite Star is from 1940, and The Parallelogram Block from 1945. Brunswick Star We have Jinny Beyer and her Quilter's Album (2009) to thank for Starry Field (undated), which is credited to "Alice Brooks," a pseudonym used by the Old Chelsea Station Needlecraft Company. The block was published in the Detroit Free Press. The Virginia Reel The Virginia Reel was published in Mrs. Danner's Quilts (1934; our copy, combining Books 1 & 2, is from 1971). Scioto Inhoff Danner — her real name — wrote, "Each block usually has three kinds of calico. Two are combined in the center star and one for diamonds around the star." Rolling Star is drawn up on a circle grid, but it is a simple one, requiring only a single circle drawn to the same height and width as the block. Once that large circle is on your diagram, you draw horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines through the block. Two corners of each square meet on those straight lines, and one corner of each square touches the outer circle. Easy peasy, right? Okay then: click on the "Make It!" icon above to go to Beyer's free instructions for making the block. The rest of our mockups for this pattern are arranged below. We can add a couple hundred new blocks to the site, or we can make Dreamweaver behave, but we haven't the time to do both. Eight-pointed Star The Parallelogram Block Mother's Favorite Star