platyhiker

I was looking at a cute quilt with many different star blocks, and I recognized many of them, but not the one pictured below. Does anybody know the name of this block? Interestingly, an Ohio Star fits perfectly in the center of the star, as show in the second image. Thanks for your help!

dunster

A very similar block is called Star Shower in BlockBase. The differences are that the inside star is a variable star, and the square enclosing the outer star may be a little bit smaller than in your drawing. BTW, I think your left top star point needs to be moved down and to the right if it is supposed to match the others.

Karamarie

Can't help you out on a name but I sure like it - a star in a star.

platyhiker

Good catch, Dunster! That was the last point I drew, and I was working a little too quickly.

Iceblossom

As a solid piece of fabric, I know the block as Star of Bethlehem. Which is also used for more of a Lone Star/whole quilt pattern that is quite different.

My quilting reference books are still packed -- I'm sure I've seen some variations using different colors (instead of one fabric) and maybe slightly different angles but the same general outline.

aashley333

Forgive my ignorance, but how did you draw those? I am not familiar with computer generated patterns, but I am very interested.

Quiltwoman44

well it can be done just using the grid lines on the "paper". That is how I work.

platyhiker

I used virtual online graph paper to make that drawing. It's pretty basic - graph paper that lets you draw lines on it. Lines must start and stop from intersection points on the graph paper. If you print it out, there are five squares per inch, and there's no option to resize to some other scale. But, it's enough to play around with an idea and see how it looks.

Another way to play around with ideas is to use Microsoft Paint. To figure out the star, I copied the image of the cute quilt from the web page and pasted it into Paint. There I started with drawing straight lines on it to figure out the ratios of the components. I moved one the lines around the image to use it as a ruler, and eventually I figured out that the height of one of the shorter spikes was the same as the distance from the center of the square to the base of the spike and also the same as the width of the base of that spike, which gave me enough information to be able to draw out the star.

pennyhal2

Don't know what the pattern is, but centering that tree was fantastic!