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
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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.
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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. |
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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 |
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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 |
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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.
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 Texas Trellis |
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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 |
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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
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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
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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.
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 Six-point Flower Garden  The Flower Garden |
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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 |
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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
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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.
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 Ozark Diamond |
 Ma Perkins' Flower Garden |
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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.
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 3D Hexagon (TeresaDownUnder) |
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Crazy Tile Quilt
Crazy Tile Quilt
KCS, 1939
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 |
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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 |
