Hive 5 April block tutorial for Rachel

Hi everybody, I've chosen Hidden Gems  designed by Diane at From Blank Pages, I just love her work! 

The pattern is a complete package & comes with:

• Really great detailed instructions 
• Cutting templates which are so helpful in making sure your pieces are big enough to sew, flip, and trim
• Coloring pages that help with fabric placement - I almost always take a few minutes when starting a new paper piecing pattern to at least a rough-in the colors so that I can double check the layout as I go.

Diane has paper piecing instructions on her site that are amazing if you're new to this style. Her FPP instructions are much better than I could do :) 

The colors you'll need include: 

• Three shades of blue (I'm hoping for  transparency effect in the points where they overlap) 
• a light blue for the inside diamond
• a medium blue for where the points overlap
• a dark blue for the outer, partial diamonds
• At least two teals in slightly differing shades so there's some contrast when they're assembled
• Random low volume white scraps (I love texty prints :)
• Random low volume black scraps

A note on fabric choices: I don't mind solids, but they're not my favorite, I really love a tone-on-tone like shown in my sample below; pretty much all of the fabrics chosen in my first round of blocks worked really well :) 

Here's my sample block: 

Here's a tile I did with that first block, just to see the effect of multiple blocks together: 

Yours will be added to the blocks I received from another bee I was with last year (love them all!). I'm aiming for enough for my queen size bed so I have several more to collect (don't mind the one in the lower-right corner, it just needs to be rotated :) 

The block went together really well, her patterns always do. I will say I was really glad to have basted the last seam (the long diagonal). I pulled it out and pinned some of the points - even though it's on a paper foundation, it was a little touchy. A pin or two, or some clips, will make it much more stable and the points should come together just fine. 

Let me know any questions!