Grandmother's Flower Garden

One 'flower' of the Grandmother's Flower Garden design

As part of my monthly series looking at the stories behind different quilt blocks for Popular Patchwork, I decided I had to delve into hexagons and Grandmother's Flower Garden.  I like piecing over papers and have made a number of small projects over the years: particularly leaving the papers in and looking at them from the reverse.  I've made book covers and 3-D objects like vases and bowls.  So far with the Building Block series, I've resisted the temptation to make the blocks.  I've played around with them lots in EQ7 and spent obsessive hours researching on the internet, but not actually touched fabric.  However, the call of hand piecing hexagons has been too strong.  I really don't have time to start a quilt just now, uniquely for my own pleasure:  I have got an entire gallery to fill at the Festival of Quilts in less than four months and not a single piece finished, although some are well underway and it will all be ready in time.  But the siren call of the hexagons has got me and this time the aim is large... bed quilt large ... I calculated the number of hexagons required and it is almost 2,000.  It should only take me 18 months to make, but don't hold your breath!

The back of the 'flower'