Sign up for our newsletter to make this brand new block for free!Just like old times… Kerri-Lee Mayland (left) is an anchor for NBC Connecticut. We used to work together in Boston. Here we are during a live segment from the station’s Barn Yard studio talking about the Brimfield Antiques Show and the Brimfield Block.
When Nisha and I travel to the Brimfield Antiques show in Massachusetts to find inspiration for our EPP designs, we stay at the home of Kerri-Lee Mayland. She and I go way back and have fond memories of attending the Brimfield Antiques Show while working together for Fox Boston. Now, all these years later, “KL” is an anchor for NBC Connecticut. Her side hustle has been parlayed into interior design and gardening. Her homestead, nestled in the shadows of the Heublein Tower in Avon, CT, is straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. Nisha and I soon realized that staying with KL is not only kind of like a spa vacation, but her gardens and home afford the most beautiful backdrop for our quilts!
The Brimfield Block Quilt surrounded by KL’s beautiful garden. Fabrics in this quilt are Stof, from France.
We love the outdoor seating vignettes available to stage our quilts like this vintage Ohio Star quilt that we picked up at the Brimfield Antiques Show.
You can tell we were crushing on her SHEd. This vintage dining table and victorian gazing ball allowed our Brimfield Blooming Star quilt to both reflect and rest at the same time.
Inspired by KL’s generosity and knack for all things gardening, Nisha and I wanted to create a quilt block that gave a nod to the flora and fauna of her gardens and reflect her kindness in opening up her home to us every Brimfield season. Se we decided to name it the Avon Block and make it free.
If you’re reading this tutorial, then you probably have secured your free download of the Avon Block EPP template. If you have not, you can do so by signing up for our newsletter here. Once you do, you will be emailed a code to download the template from our website for free. From there you can make copies of it or trace it onto card stock to make your Avon Block project. For those of you wishing to just purchase the papers for this block, you can do so here.
A Word About Using the Avon Block
The Avon Block is our gift to you, our awesome sewing community. This block template is for your personal use. If your friends would like to also make this block, please direct them to our email sign up link, here, and have them go through the download process to get their block for free. This block may not be printed or reproduced for sharing or re-sale. If you are a quilt shop and wish to sell the paper pieces for the Avon Block, you can do so by opening up a wholesale account with Paper Pieces and ordering the papers from them.
DO THIS FIRST
There are several ways you can put the Avon Blocks together. We recommend reading through this entire blog post first to get a sense of “where the rocks are” before beginning. Along the way we will go over stuff we did, but wish we had done differently and point you in the right direction. We believe that showing the “why” behind a particular method is important, so that is why we chose to leave some of the wrong paths we took included in this tutorial.
Avon Block Tutorial Version 1
I put this pillow together as a trial run. It worked, but I will caution you that it is quite easy to get wonk in your blocks when you piece them together as I did here using the “version 1” method. I knew my pillow top would have open space surrounding the lattice work of my EPP blocks that would “absorb” any measurement differences that ended up occurring and I was OKAY WITH THAT. ••Before you begin, I strongly encourage you to look at “Version 2” + “Version 3” (at the end of this blog) •• for putting these blocks together and pick the one that speaks to you. This tutorial is meant to cover the construction of the Avon Blocks. I will go through the rest of the steps I took to make the pillow cover, however, I will own the fact that those steps are not very specific and I don’t even •try• to cover how I did the zipper (this is not my strong suite!) Caveats aside, let’s begin!
Here are how your Avon Blocks will print from your printer. Cut away the outside perimeter + inside petal shape negative space. Prepare to trace onto card stock (if you didn’t print the block onto card stock already.) I had some used USPS flat rate envelopes on hand and they ended up being a nice “weight” card stock onto which to trace my Avon Blocks. The finished block size is 7″.I had some leftover Art Gallery solid smooth denim fabric in “Afternoon Sail” from our Mister Domestic Brimfield Meadows quilt that I knew I wanted to use. I traced around both the outside and inside perimeters of my Avon Block with a white pencil, leaving room for seam allowance.I love my Martelli Notions ergonomically correct rotary cutter! It makes cutting out the TWELVE SIDES of the Avon Block a breeze!Here is how the back of my Avon Block looks laying on top of my cut fabric. Take note in Version 2, the part of cutting away the petal negative space is a bit different.
HOLD THE PHONE
I debated long and hard about including the next section of this tutorial, or just scrapping it and showing only the “better practices method” that our friend, Courtney Reed (@sewthishappened on instagram) figured out. But I’m including it so you can see the *exact steps* I took in this trial run. HOWEVER I urge you to follow Courtney’s method for glue basting your Avon Block in “Version 3 Method” at the bottom of this post.
I’m a glue baster. Take your glue pen and smear some glue along, but not at the exact, edge of one side of your paper piece. I always star about half way down the initial edge. This will allow each side that gets folded over and glued down to have one end of the folded fabric on top and one end below the neighboring fabric fold. This “over /under” method keeps my brain that craves balance happy.After you fold over the first side onto the schmear of glue, move onto the next side. (I usually work counter clockwise, but it doesn’t matter.) Draw another schmear of glue onto both the paper and extending to the fabric. Remember ••• LESS IS MORE••• I say this but I don’t always do this.
As you work around the outside perimeter of the Avon Block you can begin to see the “over under” method I employ. HEADS UP – the angles between some of the sides is rather minor. When folding the fabric over, it is easy to add onto the lengths of these sides with the additional fabric created by folding it. This is important to realize because when you go to stitch the blocks together using the “version 1 method” it can add a small amount of length (or take away length) to your row of stitched-together-blocks. This ended up not being a big deal in the case of this pillow because of my blank “white space” fabric between my latticework EPP and the piping of the pillow. But I wanted to try to track down where the problem possibly began and I •think• this might be it. THIS IS WHY WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO FOLLOW COURTNEY’S INSTRUCTIONS FOR GLUE BASTING COMING UP IN “Version 3 Method” at the end of this post.After all the outside edges have been glue basted, start working on the inside petal pieces negative space. Because of the pretty severe concave curves, you will want to put snips into the seam allowance (much like you would when constructing a neckline or sleeves in a garment) to allow the fabric to spread out when folded over.Here’s a close-up of how many snips I did on this one curve. Note that the snips do •not• go all the way to the card stock.Here are all four petals snipped but not glue basted.Add some glue to the card stock and start folding the snipped seam allowance over. Notice how the snips allow the fabric to ease and spread out. Also note that I did a pretty crappy job of not listening to my own rules about leaving a dry gap between the edge of the card stock and the glued schmear. Oh well. We encourage doing this because it makes sewing into the edge of the fabric easier for the applique section later. Also, the “less is more” gluing makes it easier to remove the card stock later.Here’s how the back looks after doing all outside and inside glue basting. Hot mess, right? Just you wait (it gets worse, lol)Here is how the Avon Block looks from the front after all sides are glue basted. Leave those dog ears in tact on the petal pieces points for now. I pressed it with my iron. I think pressing it with the iron creates some “fabric fold memory” which helps in a few steps after you remove the card stock and need to press the now flimsy block back into place. But I also think it sets the glue a bit which makes removing the block slightly more difficult. I am on the fence about that, but I think pressing the block is important so I am putting that into the tutorial.Stitch each side of the blocks together. When you join four, the negative space between the blocks forms a star. You could actually stitch these by machine if you want after you remove the papers along the straight creased fold lines. This is the part where you can add some minor extra length (or shorten) to your stitched blocks if the points of your folded fabrics are “off”. Because the angles of the sides (on either end of the seam where the blocks join) are not very severe, it is difficult to gauge where exactly the blocks stitch together and therefore add extra length to your blocks (or shorten them.) Version 3 solves this problem!! Be sure to scroll down and read it. The Version 2 method removes this ambiguity, however it creates seams within the star negative space. You’ll see.Now the FUN part! Remove the card stock. This gets tedious and the little snipped seam allowances look scary. Take a deep breath and know that you will press them out with your iron later and all will be OKAY.
For this pillow, I used 9 Avon Blocks, stitched together. You can whipstitch them or whatever hand stitching method you prefer. It formed a lattice-work of blocks. I knew since I was making a pillow, that 9 blocks would be manageable “whole cloth style” and I could just lay them down to be appliquéd onto the white background fabric. The “version 2 method” has you appliquéing each Avon Block to a background square individually and then piecing the squares together. This will ensure your measurements will be •spot on• (no ambiguity about where to stitch your blocks together, however, as I said earlier, this will result in a visible seam within the star negative space.) I used Roxanne Glue-Baste-It Temporary Basting Glue to hold my group of 9 Avon Blocks to the white fabric.
Here’s how I glue basted the lattice work of 9 blocks to the white background fabric. First, I centered the 9 epp’d Avon Blocks onto my large piece of white background fabric right side up. Then, pulling back one section of my Avon Blocks at a time, I put several dots of the Roxanne glue around both the inside and outside perimeters, directly onto the folded seam allowance. Then, I folded the glued backside section of the block back over onto the background fabric. Using a hot iron, I pressed each newly glued section to heat set it.
After my lattice work sheet of 9 Avon Blocks were glue basted onto the white background fabric, I took it to my machine to machine applique the blocks down. I used Wonderfil Specialty Thread’s Invisifil. I love love LOVE this thread for machine applique. It is 100 weight 2-ply cottonized polyester. I love how it disappears into the fabric. I often use the blind hem stitch when I applique. For this project, I went with a small zig zag stitch.
This project is relatively small – 9 Avon Blocks. Machine appliquéing down the blocks was annoying because I had to completely rotate my entire project under my machine for each petal + star section. I could only imagine how cumbersome this would be for a bigger project. In “Version 2” the method you employ is appliquéing the blocks down one at a time. So, rotating each one around under your machine as you go around each star + petal piece’s negative space isn’t as big a dealI picked up this thing at Brimfield a while ago and knew I had it. I had no idea at the time it was “clothes line” (as someone kindly pointed out to me on Instagram!) I just knew I could possibly use it one day for piping a pillow if I had wanted. Enter this project! The next part of this tutorial will show you the steps I took to complete the pillow, but it’s there just to show you what I did. It isn’t very thorough (sorry). But the important part is done – you now know how to construct your Avon Blocks and piece them together doing the Version 1 method:-)I stitched together some binding strips… I think they were approximately 1″ wide.Have you ever wanted to see the inside of a clothesline? It has these vinyl-like fibre optic cable stand things.I took my clothesline and laid it flat on the binding fabric.I wrapped the clothesline and pinned the clothesline sandwich shut about every 4″I used a long pin to hold down the yet-to-be-sewn piping in advance of my zipper foot on my machine. I found that doing this worked best.Here is how it looked when I was done.This is the part where I knew my blank white space surrounding the EPP would save me from the uneven lengths of my epp rows. I was depending on it absorbing the errors. As I mentioned earlier, for some reason my rows varied in length and I think it had to do with how I stitched them together and the ambiguity created by the subtle angles of the Avon Block shape. I traced a line around all 4 sides of my pillow cover to square it off for cutting.I turned my magnetic pin bowl upside down and liked the rounded corner shape it yielded, so I traced around it.Rounded corner.I grabbed my Martelli Notions ergonomical rotary cutter and cut out my pillow top.Ta-da! My pillow top 🙂 If you look closely at the white background fabric, you can see that there is varying distances between the end of the fabric and my Avon Blocks. “Verson 2” method should solve that problem. I decided to hand embroider around the star negative space and add little embellishments in the corners of each petal.I added a zipper to the back. It was the only long zipper I had on hand and luckily it was white.Here’s a closer look at my Avon Block pillow! Nisha will show you the “Version 2” method and I strongly urge you to consider using it. I’d say the only reason to use Version 1 is if you absolutely can’t have seams in the star negative space.
Avon Block Tutorial Version 2
Howdy Friends! This is Nisha here, and I am going to quickly run you through “Version 2” of constructing the Avon Block. Kim already gave you the details and information that you need, and I am here to give you a different variation on assembling your Avon Blocks. You will glue baste and appliqué per the directions listed above, but your block assembly will be different.
As you can see, my blocks have a seam within the inner star portion – this is because I chose to appliqué each Avon Block to a square of fabric, then I sewed them all together. I eliminated the EPP portion entirely! This block finishes at 7″, so I cut 8″ squares of background fabric. I folded each piece in half twice on the diagonal to make an “X”. This made it a lot easier to center up my blocks. I pressed my block and removed the paper prior to appliquéing it down. I used the inner point of the flower and the outer corner to line up the block on the pressed lines:
Once it was lined up, I used Roxanne’s Appliqué Glue to hold the block in place. Kim showed you this step above. Then, I used the blind hem stitch to appliqué the block down – Kim also showed you this part in Version 1.
Next, I squared up my blocks. I used a 9″ square ruler – you can use whatever you like, but this was my choice. I find it helpful to make sure that I have an adequate seam allowance on both the right and left side as I am trimming the blocks. I made sure to leave 1/4″ on all sides. You can see in the next picture that there is more than 1/4″ SA – this is because I am trimming down the other side, and I wanted to leave a little to trim off on this side as well. I made sure to leave 1/4″ on all sides. Then, I sewed all my blocks together. I found it helpful to use a pin to hold the blocks in place when sewing – it made lining up the seams of the blocks easier. This also allows you to line up everything perfectly so that it gives the appearance of an English paper pieced top! This gorgeous Liberty of London fabric was sourced from Ava + Neve
And there you go! Hope you have fun putting this together, and thank you for sewing with us! Xx, nisha
Avon Block Tutorial Version 3
As we mentioned at the beginning, our friend, Courtney, discovered a great way to fold your fabric seam allowance over in a particular order for glue basting that will aid in keeping your sides consistently the right length.
Start glue basting your Avon Block around the 4 outer corners opposite the center point corners as shown above. Rub a schmear of glue onto the paper around the area about to be folded, surrounding the outer point shown.Do this on all 4 outer points opposite each center point.The unfolded sides are the “important” sides in that these are the sides that touch other blocks. So if you are going to EPP the blocks together (like in Version 1), these are the sides that will touch and NEED to be the same length. Folding the fabric in this order enables this to happen consistently.Put down some glue on the paper and the fabric.This helps you have a consistent length to all 4 sides to be stitched together. Also the ends of the side are less ambiguous, so you know exactly where to start and stop your stitching.Thank you, Courtney, for figuring this out!!!Courtney Reed, aka @sewthishappened tested our Avon Block and whipped out this quilt in no time! We are in love with the simple layout, the colors and the gorgeous hand quilting!Danielle Fox created this adorable Avon Block pillow. She used contrasting big stitch outlines around the negative spaces. She is @goldilocksandher3cubs on Instagram
We are so happy you made it through to the end! Please tag us with what you make, join our private Facebook group (The Brimfield Bee) or follow us on Instagram. We would love to see your Avon Blocks! Please use the hashtags #AvonBlock + #BrimfieldAwakening Happy stitching and much love for an amazing 2019. XO – Kim + Nisha
We are Kim + Nisha. There's a certain smell that comes with time, walking the acreage of Brimfield. There's nothing better than finding a tent with that smell - When it hits our noses, we know we're about to hit quilty gold. Start your EPP journey with us! We can't wait to stitch with you.
I’m in love with everything about this!!!!