A contemporary alternative

One of the wonderful things about quilting, and also about the blocks that are shared each week for Moda Blockheads 2020, is the unique style and flair each sewist brings to their projects. I celebrate the opportunity that quilting brings to express my own creativity and processes, and I love to see how others do the same with their creations. I was inspired by this week’s block design from Moda designer Jan Patek to express my own contemporary, one-of-a-kind Zen Chic style and developed my own unique interpretation of it.

As promised in my previous post, here is an alternative Block 18 for Moda Blockheads 2020. My block, like Jan’s, is also a hand-sewn block and also uses appliqué. You can cut out the appliqué shapes with seam allowances and hand appliqué them on, or use just the rough shape and fuse it on it with fusible web. You can then use the buttonhole stitch of your sewing machine to stitch a raw edge appliqué.

The instructions for the block are given in four different sizes, as are the templates – in 4, 6, 8 and 12 inches. You will start by sewing by hand, and using the English paper piecing technique you’ll make an 8-point star square as shown in the first picture below. You can find a tutorial for English paper piecing here – the tutorial shows a six-pointed star, but you can easily adapt this for an eight-pointed star.

You will then appliqué on a centered circle. Make three of these units, for a total of three blossoms, and remove all paper templates. Add one plain square in the left lower corner, and stitch those three units and plain square together to one larger block square. Finally, stitch on the stems and leaves. You can do this more easily with the hand appliqué method or raw edge machine appliqué. You can find a tutorial for raw edge appliqué here and a tutorial for hand appliqué here.

This alternative block does take some time and makes use of your hand sewing skills. But, it looks quite contemporary and matches a more modern style!