Thanksgiving Flower Block - free pattern.

We don't celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday in Australia. The idea of family and friends gathering together and being thankful really appeals to me. Wouldn't it be wonderful if in every country around the world people could unite in a day of thanksgiving - a universal day of thanksgiving. What a wonderful world that would be.

Over the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to play with pentagons. Here is a Thanksgiving Flower block design I came up with. If you would like to make one like it , this is how I made mine. 

The block is 12 inches square. ( cut background fabric 12 1/2 inches square at least)  The pentagons are done by paper piecing using 1 1/4 inch pentagon papers. You need 15 for this design. Choose a variety of prints that appeal to you and start to audition them until you have the look  you like best. Cover your pentagons.

 I joined the pentagon flower petals into a circle first and them cut a piece of fabric to fit the circular space created ( yellow fabric as shown above) . Make sure your circle is cut larger than the space, so that all raw edges are covered by the pentagon circle.

 Then I used a small flower shape created from one scrap of fabric and made a fabric circle for the centre.

Press all hexagon pieces so that the shapes will be retained when the paper pieces are removed. Carefully remove paper pieces.

 Place all your fabric shapes  carefully onto the block so that they look like the picture.  Pin/ tack in place onto the background fabric . I pressed a line in  my background in half vertically, to help with centering the flower and pot. Needle turn appliqué shapes into position.

Congratulations - you now have your own Thanksgiving flower block.

Want a variation?

 You can easily change your leaf pentagons into buds . Make a simple petal shape out of fabric and appliqué onto your pentagon like this... How neat is that ? I love it when there are creative options, discovered purely by play and a little extra thought. 

Happy Thanksgiving to you all,

Happy sewing  too! Love Miriamx