Orphaned 9-Patches

These lovely orphans came home with me last August, during a special Guild get-together, where we planned to use stash, leftovers, donations, etc. The rule was, “Whatever goes home with you, MUST be used and then donated somewhere.” At the end of the session, these blocks were still left on the table, and somehow, they jumped into my tote.

There were 65 blocks, all different, both in style and size. They ranged from 5 ½ to 6 3/4 so I trimmed every one 5 ½. For time reasons, I wasn’t too particular with trimming exactly to the seam lines. That meant a connecting block had to be forgiving – i.e., no matching seams, please. (A snowball connector block would have meant matching seams lines that no longer were accurate.)

Most of the blocks were medium or dark – I eliminated about 8 pale florals. There was no rhyme or reason to the positive/negative rule (5/4 or 4/5).

The hourglass connector block is usually successful. I used a dark floral blue and a pale floral green because that’s what I had. It’s kind of ‘static’, but with all those different blocks, pieced with white, I felt the strong blue/pale green combination was the best I could do. I’ll get it quilted in the next few months, hopefully.

It’s an ordinary quilt, but you know, you just cannot let those 9-patches go to waste!