Star Spangled Banners/Feathered Stars

Here's a spectacular feathered star quilt that was offered at auction earlier this year.

This block may be the fanciest feathered star of them all with it's pieced center---a Railroad Crossing or Flying Geese block. Adding applique is icing on the cake.

I have a similar antique block from about the same time

 1840-1860, so the quilt above caught my eye.

From the Quilt Engagement Calendar

The pattern was surprisingly popular. It's #2268 in BlockBase, my digital pattern program.

The published name is Star Spangled Banner, a name given a quilt in the collection of Vermont's Shelburne Museum.

You might want to rotate the BlockBase pattern like this when you set it

.

BlockBase has been out of print for about a year while the people at Electric Quilt updated the program. It's back in print so you can make a Star Spangled Banner---or any pieced quilt you'd like.

The program prints patterns for templates, rotary cutting or paper piecing, which might be the way to go with the Star Spangled Banner.

I've only seen that Shelburne quilt, the source for the name Star Spangled Banner, published once. It's in black and white in this 1957 catalog from the Museum.

The quilt with a strip border and fringed edge is signed and dated

"Alexander Cramndin, Jr. made by his mother 1840."

The center block is different from the corner blocks.

They called it the Star Spangled Banner because at least one verse from the song is quilted into the white areas below an eagle.

As far as I can make out from the photo it says:

"Star Spangled Banner
Between their loved home and the war's desolation
Blessd with victory & peace may???
Praise the Lord that hath made
and preserved us a nation"

Which are words from the last verse of Francis Scott Key's song.

I would guess many of these feathered stars are constructed in pieced modules rather than as star blocks.

Your design wall might look like this while you were working on the red and white quilt above.

Here's a block in an Ohio quilt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, made by Eliza Smith Barber in Akron. See the whole quilt by clicking here:
http://www.metmuseum.org/search-results?ft=2004.349.1&x=0&y=0
Click on the picture there to see details and more information. The border is clever.

We can assume this is the same Eliza Smith Barber (1817-1899) mentioned on this page about Akron women. She was born in Canton.

http://www3.uakron.edu/schlcomm/womenshistory/barber_e.htm

Eliza's husband George and her son

whose name was Ohio Columbus Barber

A somewhat simpler version of the pattern, one of a pair of quilts made by sisters Rachel Rich McLaughlin and Nancy McLaughlin Miller in Noble County, Ohio.

See more about the quilt above here:

http://www.antiquescouncil.com/antiques/index.php?page=out&id=2092

It's twin was on the cover of this catalog from the Canton Art Institute. Perhaps the pattern was passed around in Ohio.

A late 19th century version,

a slightly different pattern, constructed as a block.

View a similar set in the International Quilt Study Center & Museum collection (#1997.007.0288)

http://cdn.firespring.com/images/f8c6a40d-75ff-4bf6-84a1-8d0804e8082a.jpg

Red and Green Stars

Joy Swartz, 2010

45" Square

Joy entered this quilt in the American Quilt Study Group 2010 Quilt Study when the theme was 19th Century Stars. Joy copied a quilt in her collection at a smaller scale.
Read more here:
http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/qs_star_study37.asp

See another contemporary version by Debra Wagner at the Quilt Index here:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1C-3B-85
Dealer Stella Rubin has one
http://www.stellarubinantiques.com/items/622994/enlargement622994sra.html

Another from the IQSC collection (#1997.007.0367)
http://cdn.firespring.com/images/662cf909-e418-4485-9b0a-bc202a5be755.jpg
Despite the red and white coloring and the stuffed work quilting it's dated as 1930s or 40s.

It may look intimidating but with BlockBase you can print the pattern any size: I'd be thinking 36".