Poppies add a brilliant note to summer, growing in gardens, hedgerows and cornfields. I love Icelandic poppies with their large fragile petals and beautiful colours, but I’ve chosen to do a black centred red poppy - a special poppy to commemorate the soldiers who died in the First World War and an evocative symbol reminding us to never forget those who sacrificed their lives for us.

When looking at poppies it was tempting to do an applique block to really emphasize their long elegant shapes and their leaves, but I’ve chosen to do a stylised pieced block, with bias stems which curve so beautifully.

So far I’ve made variations on the pattern three times, just trying to get the piecing simple and playing around to make the stems fit nicely onto the flower buds.

Pieces cut - all squares and rectangles … nice.

The skills you need to make this block are actually quite straightforward. The centre flower is snowballed, as are the buds. Ok, the buds are relatively small but that actually makes it easier. The flowers at the sides are just half square triangles with the green added using the snowball technique again. The stems are made from bias strips and mock hand appliqued by machine. the rest of the piecing is just all rectangles and best of all, hardly anything needs to match.

snowballing the petals and buds. I love this technique, so easy.

The centre flower is just made by using the snowball technique to add black squares to one corner of each petal and background squares to the opposite corner. When flipped, triangles are formed and the flower is sewn together.

Half Square triangles for the flowers at the sides

The side flowers are just made using a half square triangle with a square of green sewn to the corner of the red.

I admit the buds are a bit small but actually pretty easy. They are just snowballs. By using smaller squares on the top of each bud, I was able to create a quarter inch gap so the stem matches perfectly onto the bud (very pleasing).

Bias strips - no need to turn, just hide the seam beneath the strip.

Bias strips are a lovely way to create smooth curves. I tried a batik fabric but decided my life would be easier with a looser weave that would bend more easily into the shape I wanted. I really wanted quarter inch bias strips, so I used the technique where you fold wrong sides together and then run a really small seam down the long edge. This can just be pressed to hide the seam and then it’s an easy job to applique the stem onto the background.

Ready to piece the sections together. Raw edges of the bias trips will end up in the seams.

I love mock hand applique because it gives such a clean light edge. It’s not heavy. I do think it’s worth tacking the stems in place though as it’s one lot of sewing which will never be unpicked.

I’m really liking this block and while I love it in the red and white or red and grey, I think it would be so pretty in the pastel colours of icelandic poppies with a white background. Maybe that’s another project.