The construction of this block ended up being quite a mental workout, relying on all my pattern drafting skills and stitching tricks of the trade to make it happen. But it all started out pretty innocently …

I’d finished the previous thing (a batch of sashing) on a Thursday night, and wanted to have the next thing ready to work on at bowling the next day. Despite the complexity, this block seemed like one that I could get to a starting point pretty quickly. It’s kind of like the pea pods block but with bonus melons in the corners, so I took much the same approach here.

I started by cutting out a 5.5″ square of both the solid red background fabric and the white starred fabric, because I’d learned my lesson with previous blocks like this that the fabric cinches up quite a bit in the appliqué process.

Then I printed out a block outline and added 1/4″ extra around the outside of the block. Why I didn’t just add 1/2″ like I did to the fabric squares is a mystery, but it worked out so I’m just going to go with it.

Next, I cut out the section in the middle of the block outline that had those pea pods, the inner melons, and the sucked-in square shape. This would be my pattern piece for the red background.

I layered the red square on top of the white square, and then eyeballed centering the pattern piece on both blocks. Then I traced around the outside and inside of the pattern piece, directly onto the front of the red square.

It’s okay to do this because the outline on the outside is the cutting line for the square block (remember that I cut the fabric out with an extra 1/4″ on each side). I figured it would not cinch up so much that this line would ever show on the completed block. And the inside line would be turned under as part of the appliqué. So, it would work out that none of these chalk lines would show on the finished block.

I cut the red square only (not the white one underneath!) about 1/4″ in from the inside line I’d drawn, clipped that inner seam allowance at regular intervals, and reverse appliquéd the red onto the white fabric underneath.

Once that was done, I just needed to appliqué four red melon shapes in the center, and four white melon shapes in the corners. This was the point where I discovered that the Dear Jane software did not provide pattern pieces for the red melon pieces in the center. All the melon pieces on this pattern sheet are for the white melons that go in the corners:

But I worked it out, by printing out a block outline, cutting out one of those center melons, and using that to trace the stitching line for those pieces. Then I eyeballed a quarter inch outside those stitching lines and cut out the pieces.

For those that are tackling this annoying block, be aware that the outside curve of those center melons is larger than the inside curve. So, be sure to mark which side is which when you cut out those pieces.

Maddeningly, the four center melons on the block outline were not all the same size, but by this point, I was so irritated that I cut them all out at the same size as the largest melon and figured I would finesse them into lining up with the points of the reverse appliqué.

The last step was to appliqué the white melon shapes (the ones I actually had pattern pieces for). There was some debate about whether to stitch those melons on through both layers of fabric (the red background and the white square underneath it). I considered cutting away the white underlayer underneath those white melons, but worried that the inside points of the white melons were so close to the reverse appliqué that there would be visible fraying if I trimmed away that underlayer.

Overall, I think the finished block looks pretty good. It’s a little disappointing that some of the white pieces are underneath (peapods and center shape), and some are on top (melons), but it didn’t seem feasible to reverse appliqué the melons, so this is a reasonable, if not ideal, solution.

I also didn’t love that the white fabric was thin enough that the red behind it showed through in the middle of those white melons. I’m thinking when I hand quilt this block, I’ll have to put a line of decorative red stitching right where the edge of the seam allowance shows through on those white melon shapes. Hopefully the contrasting red thread will make the color difference less noticeable between the edges and the centers of those melon pieces.

It was one thing after another with this block, but it all worked out in the end.