Quilting block swaps Australia: Using orphan quilt blocks

How to JOIN quilting block swaps Australia

Hello and thank you for visiting. This is a community group for all Australian quilters to join or just follow. Membership is FREE and you are partnered each month and we make each other a 12 inch quilt block based on our preferences which we swap. (12.5 inches raw edge to raw edge) The emphasis of the group is on friendship and sharing. To find out more or register to join email me on quiltingblocks@hotmail.com This purpose of this blog is to chat and showcase blocks and quilts made by members, kind of like a show and tell . Yours in stitching, Sue

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Using orphan quilt blocks

In the two and half years that I have been running QBSA I have accumulated a pile of orphan blocks. I have decided to try and use these up in little projects and as I do I will share them with you if you make a small project from orphan blocks I encourage you to share them with us too, just like you would the big quilt projects you make with blocks received.,

What are orphan blocks you may ask, well they are ones that don't quite fit the quilt you are planning, they may be the wrong colours, the design does not go with the others or in the case of the one I am sharing tonight they are an incorrect size.

Tonight I had a rummage through all of the quilt blocks that I have collected and I have pulled a few out to make some small items from them.

My first one is this cushion in blue teacups. This block was made for me by Alethea, and unfortunately it only measured 11.5 inches so too small to incorporate into a quilt. my request was any block in blue in small prints like what you find on tea cups, and her interpretation was to do a nine patch block and fussy cut the tea cups. Its a really pretty block so I would have hated it to go to waste.

First I machine appliqued the tea cups as they had only been fused on, and with use would fall off with repeated use if I did not secure them.

Then I added a couple of extra borders ( the original block finished with the first dark blue border.
I backed it in the same blue as the outer border with a closure trim in my first border to tie it all in, and shazzam, now I have a pretty new cushion.