Monday, September 19, 2016

New Life For Old Blocks

Participating in the Quilty Orphan Adoption Event made me dig around in my orphan block drawer.  It's a big drawer, and there are A LOT of blocks in there.  I found a set of twelve 6.5" string blocks.  Alone, they weren't enough to make a quilt, but if I made them into HST blocks, I'd have 24 blocks, which, with a border or two, IS enough to make a small quilt.  That was my mission for today - to turn those sad little string orphans into a quilt.

Piecing went quite quickly, and I added a white inner border,

but then spent a ridiculous amount of time auditioning outer border fabrics.

No one fabric seemed right to me, and then it hit me - a pieced border!  I have all those precut scraps, so I pulled out the 3.5" bin and set about piecing a border.  I love it!  The chevrons remind me of Charlie Brown, so that's what I'm calling this one, the Charlie Brown Quilt.  It measures 34" x 45".

While working on the Charlie Brown Quilt, I pulled out more orphan blocks and set about sewing them together as my Leader & Enders project.  One of my goals this year was to make an orphan block quilt to replace the one I made years ago and used to keep in the car for road trips and sleepovers and visits to the drive-in theater.  Somehow, that quilt disappeared and I miss it, so today I started on its replacement.  What fun to sew orphans and scraps into chunks!  I've made 8 so far, all somewhere between 9.5" and 16.5" square.  This will be one riot of a quilt!





My favorite.  These dresden plate blades are left over from a quilt I made for my sister nearly a decade ago!

I really like this chunk, too!


I'm linking up with Oh Scrap! and Monday Making.

3 comments:

Cynthia Brunz Designs said...

I am getting ready to make a quilt with some orphan blocks too! It is so much fun puzzling out how to sew them all together. Thanks for sharing with Oh Scrap!

Julie Fukuda said...

Other than the fact I work all by hand, your scrappy solutions look as if they came from my piles.
Nice creative solutions!

KaHolly said...

Very clever. We should all take a page out of your book! I have lots of orphan blocks scattered throughout my sewing mess. Guess I should start by finding them all and putting them all in one place.