The third flower in the Quilty Chicks Block of the Month is a Prairie Flower quilt block variation. The construction is pretty straightforward with a ton of stitch-and-flipping. Keep reading or watch the video for all the details.

Top Tips for Flower 3: Prairie Flower Variation

Tip 1: When choosing your fabric make sure there is enough contrast between the two flower fabrics. Choose one that is fairly dark and another that is lighter. This will keep the petals from blending into each other. You can read more about value here.

Tip 2: Prep as much as you can before sewing. I pinned background squares to all the units in step 2 and 4 before moving to the sewing machine to sew them all at once. This can help speed the piecing process. I decided that the tiny squares in step 3 were too small to effectively pin and just placed them on the corners of the yellow squares at the sewing machine.

Tip 3: Sew from corner to corner on all units. You may be able to do this without marking the lines. Just keep your eye on the opposite corner as you sew. To speed the process, do not cut the thread between units, continue to chain piece until all units are pieced.

Because we prepped and sewed all the units at the same time, we can also trim the corners and press all at once. Super efficient! We just have to go back and add one more background square to the step 2 unit.

Tip 4: The ‘spiderweb’ method to sew the units together into the final block is super fast and effective. The method can also be used to sew blocks together into a quilt top. Check out my YouTube video at minute 11 and I’ll walk you through it.

Those are my top tips! If you need step by step instructions, check out my YouTube tutorial.