Shoo Fly Garden Quilt Tutorial

Months before I finished the EPP portion of my Hexie Rainbow quilt, I started thinking about what would be my next EPP project. I knew I didn't want to be without one, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next. I considered buying a pattern from Jodi at Tales of Cloth (she has some beautiful ones!), but ultimately I decided I wanted to stick with hexies, but play with ones that were smaller than the 1" size I used for the Hexie Rainbow. 

I have to say, ½" hexies are so cute!

Once I settled on the ½" hexies, I needed a plan for them. I remembered the Flowers for Eleni quilt Jodi created with donated hexie flowers back in 2015 (including two flowers from me). There was something about the hexie flowers appliquéd to a background square that I loved, and I've wanted to do something similar ever since. 

I played in EQ8 with some different options. Sashing or no sashing? Offset blocks or straight set or on point? Eventually I settled on this, with shoo fly blocks formed by the stitch-and-flip corners and the cornerstones of the sashing. Ignore the one corner of the block that was added a little wonky and then repeated across the whole quilt; I haven't bothered to go back and fix it, but all the corners will be straight in the quilt. 

My quilt will finish at 54" x 69" and will require 154 hexie flowers. That's 1,078 hexies hand stitched into flowers, then hand stitched to their background squares, so I think I'm good for a travel project for a while 😊 I love having a project to take with me when we're driving around the province or traveling anywhere else, and I don't want to have to keep coming up with a new one, so a multi-year hand stitching project suits me just fine.

I have a few rules for myself as I make the blocks:

1. All the flowers will have yellow centers, and those fabrics will be repeated.

2. That means no yellow flowers.

3. No black flowers, since the shoo fly 'blocks' will be solid black. All other colours are fair game.

4. Flowers can be prints or solids.

5. All the hexies for a flower's petals are made from the same fabric.

6. I'm trying not to repeat fabrics for the flower petals, though it's possible I'll lose track of what I've already used and I'm not going to stress about it if something sneaks in for a second flower.

7. The backgrounds will be solid white and white-on-white prints.

I've been stitching flowers for a few months now and I have 31 made. 

I've also stitched some to their background squares and added the black stitch-and-flip corners so I could get an idea how they'd look together. Even without the sashing, I like where this is going!

For now, they're all hanging out on the side of my design wall, keeping my Kitchen Party blocks company. I love watching the collection grow!

Want to make a Shoo Fly Garden quilt of your own? Here's how!

For each block, you'll need:

• scraps for the flower petal hexies and the flower center hexie
• ½" hexie papers (see below for mine)
• 4 ½" square of white solid or tone-on-tone print
• 4 1 ½" squares of black solid
• thread to match your hexies
• thread or glue for basting the hexies
• small pins (optional, but very helpful)

Make a block

1. Print and cut out the hexie papers. Be sure to print at 'actual size' or '100% scaling'. The sides of the hexies should measure exactly ½".

2. Pin the hexie papers to the wrong side of your fabric scraps, leaving enough room between them for the seam allowance. A ¼" seam allowance looks huge compared to the ½" hexie paper, but you still need that full ¼" seam allowance. I love these tiny Clover applique pins for this, especially with the ½" hexies.

3. Cut out the fabric hexies. This doesn't need to be precise, as long as you have a good seam allowance. Because they're so small, they're easy to cut with scissors, which is what I've been doing. You need 6 for the flower petals and 1 for the flower center.

4. Thread baste or glue baste the hexies. I prefer to thread baste, only going through the fabric, not the papers. I have a tutorial on how to prepare shapes for English Paper Piecing you can check out if you've never done it before.

5. Once your hexies are all basted, stitch the flower together using a thread that blends with your fabric. I prefer to use a whip stitch, but you can also try the flat back method of stitching EPP to see what you prefer. Once the flower is stitched, remove the papers.

6. Fold the background square in half horizontally and vertically and finger press it to create creases. Using the creases to help, center the flower on the background square and pin it in place.

7. Again using a thread that blends with the fabric of your flower, stitch the flower to the background. I love the ladder stitch for this because it's almost completely invisible. You could also stitch them by machine if you prefer.

8. For the stitch-and-flip corners, you can draw a diagonal line from corner to corner on the wrong side of the black 1 ½" squares or you can eyeball it, which is what I've been doing. Normally I draw the lines, but these squares are small enough I'm comfortable winging it. Place a black square on the corner of the background square as shown and stitch from corner to corner.

9. Repeat for the other three corners.

10. Trim off the excess, leaving a ¼" seam allowance. 

11. Press the black triangles open. You have a finished block! Now go make a whole bunch more 😂

To make a quilt top

I don't have any pictures of this part because it's going to be quite a while yet before I get there!

1. Once you have all your blocks made, lay them out in whatever size layout you planned. Mine will be 11 x 14 (eventually). Here's how it would look for a 9 x 9 (44" square) baby quilt.

2. Cut your sashing and cornerstones.

• Sashing - 1 ½" x 4 ½" rectangles
• Cornerstones 1 ½" squares

3. Stitch the blocks, sashing, and cornerstones together into rows. Press the seams either open or towards the sashing.

4. Stitch the rows together to complete the quilt top.

If you make a Shoo Fly Garden block (or blocks), I'd love to see! Please tag me if you share it on social media or you can send me an email at devotedquilter@gmail.com.

My Hexie Rainbow quilt top took 8 years to make. I wonder how long my Shoo Fly Garden top will take! 

Use That Stash!

How many quilts do you think you could make with the fabric in your stash? If you're like me, it's probably quite a few! If you want to start using the fabric you already own, come join us inside the Stash Artists membership!

What's included in Stash Artists?

• 6 exclusive patterns each year

Stash Artists patterns are designed to be scrappy and stash-friendly. That means they use lots of different fabrics, rather than large amounts of just a few fabrics. The patterns are available only to members for at least a year from their release date.

• instant access to the Spin & Sparkle pattern

When you join Stash Artists, you'll be able to download the brand new Spin & Sparkle pattern. This giant scrappy pinwheel can be made in baby, throw, or queen sizes, and all sizes use the same number of HSTs.

• Instant access to the Reverberate baby quilt pattern

You'll also be able to download the Reverberate baby quilt pattern. This paper pieced pattern creates a fun secondary design between blocks.

• Sew Together Sessions

Quilty friends are the best, so let's sew together! Monthly Sew Together Sessions over Zoom allow us to stitch while we share about our favourite books, our travel plans, our families, and more. 

• Kitchen Party BOM

The Stash Artists 2025 block-of-the-month is Kitchen Party. It includes blocks that are traditionally pieced, paper pieced, and applique. Don't worry if any of those are new to you! There are video lessons in the membership to help you learn new techniques.

If you like what you see here, come join dozens of quilters making beautiful, scrappy quilts inside the Stash Artists membership! Don't delay, the doors are open for new members only through May 20th.

Join Stash Artists now!

Spin & Sparkle

I love pinwheel quilts, scrappy quilts, and the colour blue, so this new quilt checks all the boxes! Meet Spin & Sparkle 😍

Spin & Sparkle is the Stash Artists pattern for May (We're not talking about the fact that I still haven't blogged about the March pattern, Summer Dreamin' 😆 I'll get it posted eventually) The Spin & Sparkle pattern has baby, throw, and queen size instructions, all of them made with the same number of HSTs, just in different sizes. I made the baby size, since I'm still on a mission to use batting offcuts. Zach was thrilled to be hiding all 6'1" of himself behind the 48" quilt for these pictures!

To write a new pattern, I start by figuring out all the quilt math, so I know how many blocks I need, how many units, etc. Then I figure out the cutting instructions for the size I'm going to make (the other sizes usually get figured out later), then I make the sample quilt. When it comes to figuring out how many pieces to cut, HSTs are among the simplest blocks - you need 1 square of each fabric for every 2 HSTs. I know that. And yet somehow I still managed to cut, sew, and trim twice as many dark blue/light blue HSTs as I needed. I take that as incontrovertible proof that I am right to always send my patterns to a technical editor before they're released! Having someone else check my math will never be a bad idea.

When I was planning this quilt, I figured I would quilt it with the double-loop design that always makes me think of wind. That seemed appropriate for a giant pinwheel quilt, but the quilt had a different idea. Once the HSTs were all up on the design wall, the quilt started whispering that it wanted to be quilted with a big spiral. I resisted. I really don't enjoy walking foot quilting. I think it looks great, but it's incredibly boring to do, so I avoid it like the plague. The quilt insisted, though, and by the time the top was pieced I knew I'd have to quilt that spiral.

The quilt, of course, was right. The spiral was boring to do, but it does look fantastic!

I love how it looks from the back, too. It was a bit windy while we were at the beach, so getting straight pictures of the quilts was tough. You'll have to believe me when I say my Spin & Sparkle is not a parallelogram!

When I quilted the spiral for my Burst quilt, I got myself stitching in the wrong direction, so that the part of the quilt already quilted went to the right of the needle. That meant as I got closer to the edges of the quilt, more and more had to pass through the throat space. When I was getting ready to start this spiral, I was very aware of that, but I still started going in the wrong direction! Yes, this quilt did feel like a comedy of errors at times. Thankfully I realized it as soon as I started making the second pass of the spiral, so I stopped, ripped out the stitches, and started again in the right direction.

I used Aurifil 2600 to quilt the spiral. It's visible against the blue fabrics up close, but it's not distracting at all, and it's not noticeable from a distance. All you see from a distance is the lovely texture.

One of my favourite things about scrappy quilts is remembering where all the different fabrics came from or which projects they were previously used for. That floral binding the corner above? I made a skirt with that years ago. A bunch of the fabrics, both blues and low volumes, come from the years I was an Island Batik ambassador. They were so generous with their boxes of fabric that I may always have some in my stash! There are a couple of blues that I bought at a quilt shop in Canmore, Alberta, when Paul and I were on our 25th anniversary trip last summer. A scrap quilt is like a fabric collection of memories.

If you love scrappy quilts as much as I do, you'll love the Stash Artists membership. Doors will be opening for new members next week, so get on the waitlist to be sure you don't miss that. New members will get access to the Spin & Sparkle pattern as soon as they join, along with our current BOM, Kitchen Party.

I love designing and making these Stash Artists patterns and quilts! As I type this, background fabric for the next one is in the dryer, and I'm excited to start cutting into my stash of pink fabrics for it this week. And even though I haven't cut a single piece for that July quilt yet, I've been working on the design for the September quilt over the past few days, and I think I've settled on the colours for it. There's no chance I'll ever be bored, so long as I can make quilts!