Sewing room recovery project….
My sewing room has gotten out of control and I finally started to clean it up, at least the quilting fabric part of it. In the process of refolding, stacking and sorting yardage and scraps, I came across the remainder of the Wonky Churn Dash blocks I had won….when?… Anyway with one cabinet full of neatly folded and stacked fabric, and smaller pieces sorted into bins, one with long pieces that result from the excess backing needed to mount a quilt on a long-arm machine, and at least 5 bins needing to be cut into usable strips and squares, the 16 wonky blocks began calling my name. Having already made one quilt from the set of blocks, these were the more problem children of the group, not an even distribution of dark and light blocks, bright fabrics, dull fabrics, and a couple of blocks with low contrast fabrics. But they asked to become a quilt. After toying with the idea of sashing the blocks, I decided it would be too difficult to pick a fabric that would work well next to all of the blocks. I turned to my go to help in block placement, my husband. I think we came up with an eye-pleasing block arrangement. He also suggested a true red inner border. I had planned to use a floral outer border, but decided to check that bin full of long pieces and see if I had enough of anything that would work. The blue background with butterflies outlined in red was just right. And then I decided to add to the top and bottom to make the quilt rectangular rather than square before adding the butterfly border. The bin yielded a piece of daisy fabric the worked quite well.
That red border is perfect! Love this quilt and how it came to be. Enjoy those churns!
We made those wonky fly blocks in April, 2010. It may be made from left-overs, but there’s so much to like in your little quilt, the red inner border and the butterfly outer border that frames the quilt so nicely and seems a natural fit with the florals we used in the lotto blocks.
PS. I edited your post to change the category to Show & Tell so that your quilt will appear in the gallery.
I see that one of my blocks was a ‘problem child’ – the purple with orange flowers. I’m glad you found a way to use it.
No offense meant by labeling them the problem children….just that they didn’t play as peacefully with the rest of the group….maybe I should call them the outstanding blocks, because the stood out of the group more than I wanted on the first quilt. And if you put enough outstanding blocks together you can get an outstanding quilt!