Twelve stars on an ivory field, each one eight points wide. From across the room this quilt looks serene, almost plain, the kind of thing you would put on a guest bed without thinking twice about it. Walk closer and the arithmetic shows up. Every one of those eight points is two diamonds meeting at an angle, and the ivory between them is not background at all. It is a set of squares and triangles fitted into the gaps one at a time.
Grand Gardens is a free eight point star quilt pattern from Robert Kaufman, 70 inches by 80 inches, and it makes no attempt to look easier than it is. The cover carries the label Pattern Level: Advanced Expert, under the line "My skills are sharp, so I'm ready to take on the hard stuff." Twelve blocks in four styles, 192 diamonds cut from a printed template, and three separate steps where the instruction is to start and stop on a marked dot instead of sewing from edge to edge.
The pattern was designed by Robert Kaufman Fabrics and photographed in the Grand Majolica collection, in a colorstory called Spring, with Vintage and Garden versions at the back of the file. The rest of their free patterns live at robertkaufman.com.
Pattern details
- Pattern name: Grand Gardens
- Brand: Robert Kaufman
- Designer: Robert Kaufman Fabrics
- Finished size: 70" x 80"
- Size category: Twin
- Difficulty: Advanced Expert
- Block: Eight point star
- Technique: Set-in seams, template piecing, half square triangles
- Colorway shown: Spring, with Vintage and Garden alternates
- Fat quarter friendly: No
- Jelly roll friendly: No
- Layer cake friendly: No
- Charm pack friendly: No
Download the free Grand Gardens quilt pattern PDF
What this eight point star quilt pattern asks of you
Start with the templates, because nothing else works if they are wrong. The file prints two of them, Template A for the diamond and Template B for the small background triangle, and it tells you to print at 100 percent and confirm with the 1 inch test square on the page. Measure that square before you cut a single piece. A template printed at 97 percent will still look right, and 192 diamonds later the block will not close.
Then transfer the dots. Every template piece carries marked dots at the corners, and the pattern asks you to copy them onto the fabric with a marking pen. Those dots are not a suggestion. They are the whole method, because three of the block steps are sewn between them rather than across the full edge: joining the diamonds in pairs, adding the small background triangle, and joining two of those units with a 2 1/2 inch square between them. Stitch past a dot and the next piece has nowhere to sit.
One detail the pattern leaves out is worth knowing before the first seam. When you join two acute shapes, a diamond to a diamond or a diamond to a triangle, the edges do not line up square. They need to be offset by a quarter inch so that the stitching lines meet where they should, which is also why the raw edges will look wrong just before you sew them. If that offset is new to you, it is the single thing most likely to cost you points on this quilt.
There is also a quiet warning inside the first step. Half of the diamond pairs in each block are mirror images of the other half, so the pairs cannot be chain pieced in one direction and sorted out later. Lay the pieces out in groups on a work surface first, exactly as the pattern says, and build both orientations as you go.
The piece count, checked against the cutting list
We counted the whole quilt against the cutting instructions, because a pattern of this length is where a number goes missing. Everything closes.
The quilt center holds 192 diamonds, 48 each from four different fabrics, which works out to 16 diamonds per block across twelve blocks. Each block also takes four small background triangles, four 2 1/2 inch background squares, four large corner triangles, four 2 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch rectangles and one center square. The large triangles come from three different prints at 16 apiece, and they distribute across the four block styles exactly: 16 for the four Style A blocks, 16 for the four Style B blocks, and 16 shared between the two Style C and two Style D blocks. That is 396 pieces in the center alone.
Add 15 sashing strips, 4 inner border strips, and 376 pieces in the pieced outer border and corner blocks, and the quilt comes to 791 pieces. The border numbers close too, once you follow them through: 44 large half square triangles at two per border block, 52 rectangle units with eight held back for the corners, and 56 small half square triangles split into 30 of one unit and 26 of the other, which is exactly the 56 small squares the cutting list provides.
The finished measurement closes as well. Three blocks at 12 inches finished plus two sashing strips at 2 1/2 inches gives a 41 inch row. Side sashing brings the center to 46 inches wide, the inner borders bring it to 50, and five outer border blocks at 10 inches finished across the top and bottom add 20 more. Seventy inches. Vertically, four rows at 12 inches plus five sashing strips at 1 1/2 inches gives 55 1/2, the inner borders make 60, and the outer border adds 20. Eighty inches. No rounding, no fudge.
One label to watch in the block diagrams
There is a single place where the pattern contradicts itself, and it is small enough to miss. The twelve blocks need twelve center squares, six of one fabric and six of another, and the cutting list gives you exactly that: six 2 1/2 inch squares from Fabric H and six from Fabric J. The block diagrams on page 5, however, label the center of the Style A and Style C blocks as Fabric F, and no 2 1/2 inch squares are cut from Fabric F anywhere in the pattern.
In practice it changes very little, because Fabric F and Fabric J are both navy florals from the same line, and the quilt photograph shows six light centers and six dark ones either way. Cut what the cutting list tells you to cut, hold the two navy prints up against the photograph, and use the one you prefer. The Garden colorstory at the back handles the same twelve centers with two fabrics at six each, which confirms the shape of it.
Fabric and palette for an eight point star quilt pattern
This block only exists if the fabrics separate. Each star is built from two diamond fabrics that alternate around the ring, and if those two read as the same value from a few steps back, the eight points collapse into one blurred shape. The sample solves it with a dark and a mid, teal against purple in one pair, and it works because the contrast is in value and not only in color.
The background does a lot of work here and there is a lot of it, 1 3/4 yards of a single ivory running through every block and every gap. Choose something you are happy to look at, because it is the largest single area in the quilt. A solid or a very quiet tone on tone will keep the points crisp. A busy background will fight them.
Scale matters more than usual with this one. The diamonds are small and a large scale print loses its design entirely once it is cut into them, which is why the sample uses the big florals in the borders and the corner triangles, where there is room for them to be seen. If you want to use a print you love, put it in the outer border blocks, and keep the diamonds themselves to solids or small prints.
The pattern also calls for 5 yards of backing. At 70 by 80 inches you are looking at two lengths joined down the middle unless you use a wide back, and if you want to skip that seam entirely, our quilt backing fabric is cut wide enough to cover a quilt this size in one piece. There is more on calculating and cutting it in our guide to quilt backing.
Tools this pattern actually needs
A fabric marking pen or pencil, because the dots have to go onto the fabric and stay there until the seam is sewn. A good ruler, because the outer border asks you to trim 44 half square triangles to 5 1/2 inches and another 60 to 3 inches, and trimming is what keeps a pieced border the length it is supposed to be. Our quilting rulers cover both of those sizes. And thread you trust to backstitch with, since every dot to dot seam ends in the middle of a piece rather than at a safe edge, which is where a fine cotton thread earns its keep.
Two of our own guides will save you time on the way through. The border alone involves more than a hundred half square triangles, so our half square triangle methods and size chart is worth having open. And since template accuracy is the whole game here, how to cut fabric accurately covers the blade and ruler checks that fix most of it.
Before you start
This is a quilt to begin on a morning when you have time, not one to squeeze into twenty minutes after dinner. Set-in seams are not difficult so much as unforgiving of hurry, and the first block will take far longer than the twelfth. If you have never sewn one, our guide to partial seam blocks covers the closest relative, where the same idea of stopping a seam deliberately does most of the work.
If 70 by 80 inches is not the size you need, check it against our quilt size chart before you cut. Adding a row changes the sashing and the border math, and it is far easier to decide that now than halfway through.
And if this one is more than you want to take on today, there are gentler places to start in our collection of free quilt patterns. Grand Gardens will still be here when you are ready for it.
