Adopting Orphan Blocks

In quilting, an "orphan block" is when a quilter starts a quilt, or does a sample block to test a pattern, and for whatever reason doesn't finish.  So the blocks sit in piles, and land in give-away bags, and find their way to thrift stores or free tables.  I enjoy adopting other quilters' orphans to make my own quilt tops, because a lot of the finicky work is done, and I can play around with colors and arrangements with a degree of freedom that comes from low emotional investment in the project.  

This project is a perfect example, and one where I ended up loving the end result.  

I found these churn dash blocks in a vintage shop.  They are hand-sewn, very uneven and quirky.  My first challenge was to stabilize the edges and press them flat.  Then when I sewed on the sashing strips, I used variations in the sashing width to make up for un-evenness in the blocks so the finished quilt would lie flat.  

The diagram below shows the quilting pattern I did.  My mom taught me how to draw a "curve" using only straight lines when I was a kid, so I played with that.  I used pins at regular intervals to mark my target points, used a ruler and chalk to draw the straight lines, and quilted.  

Don't ask me why I just wrote "blue" in the legend. I drew this while tired! There is no blue quilting in the finished quilt.

This photo shows the quilting partially finished, and how I enclosed the edges before quilting, as I often do for small quilts, to avoid binding at the end. 

When the quilting is done, there are two faux curves in each quadrant, and filler in the middle spaces.  Because the faux curved include areas where the lines are very close together, and other areas far apart, the quilt shrunk unevenly, and doesn't hang straight.  Lesson learned!  But I still love it, and it's a regular piece of artwork on my bedroom wall.  I rotate between this one, the meadow quilt, and New York Groovy.