Shooting Star quilt block

Shooting Star

August 12, 1933-The Shooting Star quilt block is said to have originated in Kentucky. This is another very easy block to make. It can easily be made from squares and half square triangle blocks.

Nancy Cabot, referring to the Shooting Star block, wrote in her Chicago Tribune column, "Old fashioned quilters will cling to the original color scheme of the designer, which was blue and white prints. Young moderns will employ pastel tints."

To make this block, you need four 2" squares of background fabric, four 2" squares of a contrasting fabric, and eight half square triangle blocks made from your background fabric and another main fabric. The half square triangle blocks need to finish at 1 1/2".

The block can also be made like the Clay's Choice block published on April 2, 1933.The center is mirror image and the corners are colored differently but it's still basically the same block as the Shooting Star. I paper pieced the center sections that form the pinwheel in my Clay's Choice block.

Clay's Choice

I decided to make my 6" block yet another way.  I made it all by rotary cutting the pieces. You need twelve 2" squares of background fabric, four 2" X 3 1/2" pieces of a fabric for the center pinwheel and four 2" squares of a contrasting fabric. You assemble the pinwheel sections by sewing on the diagonal of a background fabric square on opposite corners of the rectangular piece as shown below-

A background square and a contrasting fabric square are sewn together and attached to the pinwheel piece like this-

You just need four of the sections like the one on the right above. Simply rotate the sections to create the block!

The Shooting Star block can be found in Electric Quilt's Blockbase program as #1347. Directions for a 12" block can be found at Quilter's Cache.

The is an old pattern from the Ladies Art Co. here and two copies of patterns attributed to Nancy Cabot.

I love this Shooting Star quilt from the 70's! Check out the nifty quilter to hear it's story and see some more quilts made from fabrics from the 1970's. Each background is a different fabric and the block is made from half square triangles and squares like I mentioned above.

Tomorrow-Illinois Star