Star Pattern Without a Name

Or a number!

It's a common pattern, a variation on the Lone Star or Star of Bethlehem

with what we tend to call "satellite stars" in the corners and edge triangles.

Pennsylvania 1880-1910

Quilt dated 1838-9 Moore

Winterthur Museum

Here's the earliest date-inscribed example I've found

Most seem to come from the Pennsylvanians 

about 1880-1910 or so.

Stauffer family, Mannheim Pennsylvania

The North Carolina project uncovered a few.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a terrific example

they call Star of Bethlehem

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/16293?rpp=20&pg=1&ao=on&ft=star+quilt&pos=12

The same name the  International Quilt Study Center and Museum

gives this Pennsylvania variation.

http://cdn.firespring.com/images/eaffb629-6294-4164-8155-d14f17c2183d.jpg

But Star of Bethlehem really just refers to the category of large stars of diamonds

(BlockBase #4005)

Example from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum

at Colonial Williamsburg

How could a pattern so distinctive, so early and so common go with an unrecorded name?

My guess is that pattern names were recorded (or made up)

by designers selling quilt patterns beginning about 1880. This complex star with

stars would be hard to show as a block and hard to

draw up or kit up.

By Lydia Hall, about 1900,

 from the Wyoming project and the Quilt Index.

I can't give it a name but I can assign it a number. I'm writing #4005.5 in my copy of my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

I'm lumping in all the variations with different stars and sunbursts.

Marlo Miller has been looking for a pattern name for

this quilt pictured with Grandma----

"4005.5 variation" isn't very romantic but it may have to do.