Grandmother's Flower Garden

Hexagon patchwork is British. The oldest dated one was sewn by Anna Ruggles in 1796 and is now in the museum in Lincoln, and the Victoria and Albert Museum has a cover inscribed "The outside by Mrs Cockrell 1797", where rosettes of seven hexagons are parted by white hexagons: the garden is there already. The pieces were sewn over paper, and the papers were old letters, books and newspapers, which today help to date the quilts. The Workwoman's Guide, London 1838, writes that cottagers' patchwork quilts are sometimes made of hexagons.

In America Eliza Leslie printed the pattern in 1831, and Godey's Lady's Book reprinted her drawing and text in 1835. In the 1800s it was called hexagon, honeycomb or mosaic. The garden came in the 1930s, when the pattern had a revival: Old Fashioned Flower Garden in 1931, Grandmother's Rose Garden in 1932 and in the end Grandmother's Flower Garden. The museum in Lincoln has one from Geneva in Nebraska, 1931–1934, by Carrie Stelzer.

Traditionally each hexagon is sewn over a piece of paper and whipstitched by hand, what is now called English paper piecing. One flower is a centre and six petals in one fabric, and the path between is often white or green like the garden's walks.

In QuiltCrafter the design lies on a triangle lattice, each hexagon six triangles. Sewn as "Whole pieces" they become hexagons, otherwise rows of triangles are sewn without Y-seams. The same lattice carries Six-pointed stars and Tumbling Blocks.