I love to quilt! And sometimes Mr QuiltinAnnie helps with the design; figuring out the angles and measurements! This letterbox series will highlight a traditional quilt block or pattern beginning with the letter of the stamp found inside the cache. You will need to supply your own stamp pad.
Grandmother's Flower Garden
One of the best loved vintage quilts, the Grandmother's Flower Garden, is made with hundreds or thousands of hexagons, and became very popular in the 1930's. In the 19th century, hexagon quilts were known as Mosaic quilts, Honeycomb quilts or Six Sided Patchwork. This pieced hexagon quilt had roots in England as far back as the 18th century. Immigrants soon brought this pattern to America. These early quilts were made of hexagon patches sewed together without any attempt at color arrangement. Over time, various more or less elaborate 'mosaic' patterns resulted. By the 1920's, hexagon quilts were usually made in the Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern. The pattern contained a center hexagon circled by six colorful printed (often fussy cut) or solid hexagons with another row of 12 hexagons around that. The centers were sometimes yellow to represent the flower's center. Between each flower was a row of colored solid hexagons to represent the background. A green background might have been the garden while white could have been a white picket fence. The quilts were made using the English paper piecing method. With this method, a hexagon template had to be cut out of paper or light cardboard for each hexagon patch. Sometimes a quilter would remove the templates, so they could be re-used. Often they were left in the quilt as added insulation. This is a very labor intensive quilt pattern, usually pieced and quilted by hand.
This is the quilt you see in the picture of my geocaching profile. It is a queen-sized quilt I pieced in the MANY hours we have spent driving to visit family in Altona; or on a road trip south to spend a few weeks in a warmer climate, or on a flight overseas to visit our children in New Zealand!!!!