The Maple Leaf Block: Quilt A Medley of Autumn Leaves

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The lovely Maple Leaf block! Simple to make; beautiful to look at! Style your blocks with vivid colors that mimic the autumn landscape or tone them down with cool shades of green and warm shades of brown. For the September/October 2021 issue of McCall’s Quilting, our cover quilt, September Song, shows us how to add some excitement to row quilts using Maple Leaf blocks. Whether you line up your Maple Leaf blocks with the same orientation or scatter them for a playful tumbling effect, the Maple Leaf block is sure to “leave” you feeling inspired!

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The Maple Leaf block is easy to construct using a few of our favorite techniques—triangle-squares and stitch-and-flip. For these techniques, refer to our Quilt Basics Instructions are for a 6“ finished Maple Leaf block.

Materials

From colored fabric, cut:

2 (2-7/8″) squares

4 (2-1/2″) squares

From background fabric, cut:

2 (2-7/8″) squares

1 (2-1/2″) square

2 (2-1/4″) squares

Assembly

1. Referring to Triangle-Squares in Quilt Basics use the 2-7/8″ squares of colored fabric and background fabric to make 4 triangle-squares.

2. Referring to Stitch-and-Flip in Quilt Basics use 1 (2-1/2″) colored fabric square and both (2-1/4″) background squares to make 1 stem.

3. Lay out remaining (2-1/2″) squares, triangle-squares, and stem as shown.

4. Join into rows; join rows to complete your leaf block!

P.S. Feeling scrappy? Bea Lee uses a super-fun crumb technique to make the leaf blocks in her Crumbly Leaves pattern!

So, set aside the rake, warm some apple cider, and sew up some autumn glow!