Pattern Release – Sakura: A Cherry Blossom Quilt Block

UPDATE 2021: This pattern has since been renamed Blossom, you can read why here. However, I have left this post as-is so as to not erase my mistakes but to show how you can change and grow as a person.

For quite a few years now, I’ve wanted to design a cherry blossom quilt block. While we were living in Japan, the cherry blossom season was my favourite time of the year.

Just for a week or so, the streets and parks explode in fluffy pink and white cherry blossoms, called sakura in Japanese, and you attend picnic after picnic, called hanami, under the trees.

The bitterly cold winds of winter have passed, the sun is starting to warm up, and colour returns to the concrete jungle.

The best moments are when you turn a street corner, and all of a sudden, a huge tree in front of you is awash in the blossoms! A tree that, for the rest of the year is leafy, and then dormant in winter.

So designing a cherry blossom quilt block has been high on my EQ8 bucket list. But the challenge of working in fifths seemed too daunting – designing a block divided into an even number is easy, but an odd number? Not so easy! However, one day, enough was enough, and I did it. And today, being the second anniversary of moving back to Australia, is the day to share it with the world!

A big thanks as always to my pattern testers for helping me get this pattern ready to launch. These guys are the ones that pick up any errors or parts that need clarification, and help make my patterns easy to understand.

Sakura quilt block by @hillstitches

Sakura quilt block by @aureaskitchen

Sakura quilt block by @antigone_marcelena

They all concur that the centre of this block is a little bulky with all those seams meeting, but between steam/Flatter/starch and a hot iron, or even a heavy book or a hammer, you can make it work. And that it’s all worth it, when you get such beautiful blossoms!

Sakura quilt blocks by (L-R) Pippa, @katacosmino
@joeygirl_, Lisa – accidentally pieced together wrong, but I still had to share the blues with you!

And once I got started on this Japanese-inspired quilt block, more designs started flooding out onto my screen (stay tuned for those over the next few months!), but this was the first I had to get out into the world. So I’m thrilled to announce that my Sakura quilt block is now live. You can find the PDF pattern in my store here.

I can’t wait to see your cherry blossom quilt blocks! You can share them with me on Instagram by tagging me in the picture – @blossomheartquilts – and using #blossomheartquilts, and also in our Facebook group.