FieldGuidetoQuilts.com
 Hexagons


This page includes both hexagonal patterns and hexagonal blocks.

Honey-comb
Varie-
gated Hexagon
Grand-mother's Flower Garden

Godey's hexagon
Whirling Diamonds

Whirligig Hexagon

Texas Trellis

Dolly Madison Hex

The Flower Garden

Six-point Flower Garden
3D Hexagon
3D Hexagon variation

Ozark Diamond
Ma Perkins' Flower Garden
French Bouquet
Star Center on French Bouquet

Snow Crystal

Periwinkle
A spacer










Honeycomb

Honeycomb

Honeycomb isn't really a pattern, but a name for a one-patch scrap quilt made up of miscellaneous hex blocks chosen at random.

We're told that if you put your hand in a bag of hex blocks and pick each successive block without looking, you'll get a random pattern that works just as well as anything an artist could devise.

Variegated Hexagon


Variegated Hexagon
Farm & Home
ca. 1890
Like Honeycomb, variegated hexagon is simply an arrangement of hexagons, but they're divided into light and dark fabrics set in rows. According to Jinny Beyer, this quasi-block was published about 1890 in Farm and Home.

Grandmother's Flower Garden


Grandmother's Flower Garden
This is the classic, and probably the simplest, of all the Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks. So far, we haven't found it in any of our published sources. It's just the kind of design you remember.
Grandmother's Flower Garden

French Bouquet

French Bouquet
Foland, KCS, 1931
The longtime quilt columnist of the Kansas City Star, Eveline Foland, offset each "flower" by a single hexagon to come up with this singularly interesting 1931 design.

The whole-quilt mockup (click on the graphic) shows an alternative color scheme.
French Bouquet in five colors French Bouquet in six colors

Texas Trellis



Texas Trellis
KCS, 1943
It's worth noting that when the Star published this variation of the Whirligig Hexagon in 1943, the paper recommended that each block use a different pair of fabrics.

The mockup shows why: When all the hexagons are in the same colors, the hexagons meld, obscuring the honeycomb pattern.

Every last one of the hex blocks is made up of triangles like this: It's like a slice of pie with a very thick crust. The crust can be thick or thin, as long as it's the same on every slice.


Texas Trellis

Godey's hexagon



Godey's hexagon
Godey's Lady's Book 1851
When Godey's published this sweet little 12-piece hexagon, nameless, in 1851, it didn't begin to show the possibilities of the block. We'll add more, including its many names, as time goes on.
Godey's hexagon

Dolly Madison Hex



Dolly Madison Hex
LAC, 1922
Texas Star/Dolly Madison Star/Hexagon Stars/Friendship Hexagon/Hexagonal Stars/The Star Garden/A Garden of Flowers/Dolly Madison quilt block

This block only dates back to 1922, but it has more names than the Queen of England.

Dolly Madison's Pattern was the Kansas City Star's name for it in 1937. Of the other names, two are shared: The LAC's Texas Star (1922), is also used for a multi-ring diamond star, and Home Art's name, Dolly Madison Star (we don't know the date), also stands for an Ohio Star variation.

A volley of snores suits the rest: Nancy Page's Hexagon Stars and Friendship Hexagon, as well as the magazine Hearth & Home's Hexagonal Stars. The Star published it twice in the 1950s, calling it The Star Garden in 1954 (it credited a Missouri reader for the design) and, finally, A Garden of Flowers in 1956. At that point, the Star noted, it was also known as the Dolly Madison quilt block.
Dolly Madison Hex

Seven Stars/Whirling Diamonds



Whirling Diamonds

Whirling Diamond hexagons share each outer piece with another hexagon, creating a larger flower out of the strongest color -- in our whole-quilt example, white.
Whirling Diamonds


The Flower Garden/Six-point Flower Garden


The Flower Garden/Six-point Flower Garden
KCS, 1937


Six-point Flower Garden
KCS, 1938
Six Point Flower Garden/The Flower Garden

The only difference between these two blocks is in the color placement: The Flower Garden has three colors; Six-point Flower Garden has four.

The Flower Garden was published in the Star in 1937 and 1951.
Six Point Flower Garden was in the Star in 1938.

Both blocks differ from the Dolly Madison Pattern. Between each of the Dolly Madison's outer points is a diamond patch; in these two blocks it's a triangle.

Six-point Flower Garden The Flower Garden

French Bouquet

French Bouquet
Foland, KCS, 1931
The longtime quilt columnist of the Kansas City Star, Eveline Foland, offset each "flower" by a single hexagon to come up with this singularly interesting 1931 design.

The whole-quilt mockup (click on the graphic) shows an alternative color scheme.
French Bouquet in five colors French Bouquet in six colors

Snow Crystal/Star Center on French Bouquet


Snow Crystal
Dunn, KCS, 1932


Star Center on
French Bouquet

KCS, 1934
This Kansas City Star block from 1932 was credited to Edna Marie Dunn. The diamonds in Dunn's version were double triangles of identical colors.

In 1957, when the KCS published it as Star Center on French Bouquet, the double triangles (mediium pink in our graphic) had been combined as a single piece. That seems to simplify the block, but in fact it makes the block trickier to piece. In the earlier design, you could piece the entire block together as hexagons.

You'll note from the whole-quilt mockup that you'll need blocks in at least three different colors to avoid having the blocks' colors touch.

hexagons.
Snow Crystal/Star Center on French Bouquet

Ozark Diamond/Ma Perkin's Flower Garden



Ozark Diamond
Foland, KCS, 1931


Ma Perkins' Flower Garden
KCS, 1936
Eveline Foland designed Ozark Diamond, published in the Kansas City Star in 1931. It's hard to see here, but the fabric in the outer diamonds is striped. As a whole quilt, the stripes create a seemingly 3D box, and the whole pattern looks like a trellis.

Five years later, the Star replaced the Ozark Diamond's outer pieces with triangles and republished the block as Ma Perkin's (sic) Flower Garden, named for the beloved 1933 radio drama Oxydol's Own Ma Perkins. Ma Perkins was a generous-hearted widow who co-owned and ran a lumber mill in a country village. The show revolved around Ma's children and her conversations about life with the mill's other owner, Shuffle Shober.

The radio show ran until 1960, clocking more than 7,000 episodes of 15 minutes each. Only on the last broadcast was Ma Perkins revealed to be (gasp!) an actress.
Ozark Diamond Ma Perkins' Flower Garden

3D Hexagon


3D Hexagon
TeresaDownUnder
2017


3D Hexagon variation
From a 2017 post in TeresaDownUnder's "Sewn Up" blog (my patchwork.wordpress.com) comes a hexagon that seems to have a cube floating on the inside. The "Make It!" icon links to a tutorial.

If you don't mind doing Y seams, you can make the cube shape a bit more prominent by turning each pair of center triangles into a diamond.


3D Hexagon (TeresaDownUnder)

Crazy Tile Quilt


Crazy Tile Quilt

KCS, 1939
The Crazy Tile Quilt mockup at right features a bright color combination from the Kansas City Star, which published the block in 1939. There are six colors: blue, black, red, white, and yellow.

Here's an example in friendlier hues:

To make the most of this design, you really do need six contrasting fabrics arranged just like the KCS block.

You'll notice that the block is made up of half-hexagons. For two more blocks that incorporate half-hexagons, click here:
Crazy Tile Quilt

Periwinkle



Periwinkle

Periwinkle is a spacer block, a sister of the Arkansas Snow Flake and Pontiac Star, but cut to fit the profile of a hexagon. It would be a wonderfully effective use of scraps with single-fabric hexagons, or vice versa.
Periwinkle Periwinkle