So, if you get into English paper piecing, sooner or later you'll discover the Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. It's an old design, dating back to the 1930's, that involves a quilt top pieced entirely from little hexagons, all arranged in a pretty flower pattern.

I loves me some Grandmother's Flower Garden. I've started four of these quilts over the years. But the problem is, making a Grandmother's Flower Garden involves sewing about a thousand hexies together, and I always peter out long before that number.





…And that's why I designed this pattern. It's my way of getting a beautiful hexie flower quilt, but with way less work.

I decided that I wanted the fun of making the flowers, but stitching a whole mess of plain background hexies to connect them… not so much. And so I figured out this straight-row design. it's reminiscent of how a typical cutting garden of flowers is planted, in wide rows for easy access to the blooms. And it sneakily fills the quilt top with flowers, but without so much hand-stitching.





For this quilt you need just 18 English paper-pieced hexie flowers, plus some hexie stems to connect them. When you finish the EPP, you machine applique it to a simply-pieced quilt top. Add some quilting and a scrappy pieced binding, and you have it!

I had a wonderful time making this quilt. And best of all, there was never time to get bored. :-)





The pattern is now available in my shop, and you can get the deeper details of materials and such over there.

It's a bit of a whopper at 48 pages, but I wanted to cover every facet of the EPP and quilt-making processes in a beginner-friendly way. If you've never tried EPP or quilt-making, you can totally make this quilt. If you're an old hand, then you'll just enjoy how quickly it all comes together. Happy Stitching!