Combination Star - Quilt Block Mania

It's time for Quilt Block Mania again and the theme this month is Stars. I loooooove star quilt blocks! I've used stars in a bunch of my patterns - see Between the Stars, Medallion Magic, Reach for the Stars, Friendship Galaxy and Night Sky.

For my QBM block, I wanted to play around with combining stars together in one block, then I couldn't come up with a name, so Combination Star just kind of stuck. Naming blocks and patterns is harder than it looks!

I like the shapes of the secondary pattern that happens when you tile four Combination Star blocks together. 

I thought the secondary pattern would look even more interesting if you added another square in one corner. With that extra square, you get another four patch in the center when you put four blocks together. I started out with the Quilt Block Mania colour palette, but blue and yellow or orange is pretty much my default colour setting. Almost every quilt I design in EQ8 gets coloured with blues to start and then sometimes I convince myself to branch out to different colour possibilities. Other times I just stick with the blues because they make me happy. Do you have a default colour setting?

I liked that variation so much I decided to use it for my block, with the blues and yellows, of course. Here's one block...

And here are its three friends! The Combination Star pattern includes the cornerstone variation, too, so you can make your block with or without the secondary four patch.

The plan was to have these sewn together and maybe even quilted and bound, but life got in the way and they're still separate blocks. Ah well, I'll get back to them again soon.

Combination Star is a great scrap buster and you know I love scrappy quilts, too! I have a big stash of 1 ½" squares already cut, plus another stash of them already sewn into same-colour four patch blocks. That stash was the basis of my Scraps Squared pattern and I still have plenty left over. I keep toying with the idea of another Scraps Squared quilt, but it hasn't happened yet (never enough time!!). In the meantime, I used four of the four patch blocks and four of the individual squares to make these blocks.

Want to make Combination Star for yourself? Get the free pattern here!

There are plenty of other Star blocks available from the Quilt Block Mania designers, so hop around and collect them all!

Stargazing Sue
Starburst at Slice of Pi Quilts
Massachusetts Star with blockofthmo.com
Nova Star at Always Expect Moore
Nativity Star
Star Bright - Cotton Street Commons
Five Pointed Star at Duck Creek Mountain Quilting
New Year Star at Stash Bandit
Poinsettia Star
Wish Upon a Satar by Heidi Pridemore
Falling Star at Pretty Piney Quilts
Star Splash at QuiltFabrication
Seward Star at Blue Bear Quilts
Moon Star at Perkins Dry Goods
Starburst at Patti's Patchwork
Cherokee Star
Christmas Tree Star
Christmas Star by Oh Kaye Quilting
Starfish by Appliques Quilts and More
Snowy Star by Seams To Be Sew
Combination Star by Devoted Quilter
Ablaze by True Blue Quilts