Laura Wheeler – Sunburst Quilt Pattern #712

This is one of those unusual patterns where the main pattern (the sunburst) appears only when you sew the blocks together. Click a couple of times on the image below to enlarge it to the original size (28″ x 17″).

I love this pattern, and I think the construction is interesting, but it’s pretty tricky to join 16 seams together in a point, and for me it’s even trickier when the point is formed at the intersection of 4 blocks.  Also, I’m not crazy about the edges in this layout, which have the appearance of half blocks. If I were making this quilt, I would stitch the block with the sunburst in the middle, sew the blocks together with a single row of pieced sashing to complete the nine patches, and then, on the outside edges, I would add one more row of sashing like this:

Here is a 1958 newspaper ad for this pattern.  Although the mail order pattern only identifies the quilt as Design 712, the newspaper ad refers to it as a Sunburst Quilt.

UPDATE: Check out this great version of the Sunburst pattern by Chris (chrisquilts.blogspot.com.au) — she calls hers “Scrappy Windmills.”  You can order Chris’s pattern from her Etsy shop Patchwork Fun.