Orphan Block quilts

A few months ago, my local MQG had a sew day just for charity, complete with challenges, prizes, clippies... and tons of fun.  Our charity group collects scraps and orphaned blocks from guild members, so one of the challenges that day was to take on some orphaned blocks and make them into quilt tops.  I loved that idea so much that I ended up taking home two projects to finish up.

The first was a little stack of blocks that just needed a few friends, so I whipped up a couple of additional blocks and then sashed it all together.  I quilted this one with close, wandering diagonal lines.  So easy to do and it gives a bit of organic texture to the top.  I don't even mark at all, just eyeball my basting pins in straight lines and then use them as a guide to keep me from getting too off-kilter as I move across the quilt. 

The other project that I took on was a set of three coordinating star blocks.  I put one in the center and cut the other two each into quarters (one on the bias and one on the straight).  I love the overall design that resulted, although it's a little sad that most of the triangles lost their perfect points when I chopped the blocks up and added more seams. 

 

 I quilted the whole thing in close-spaced echos.  I adore this quilting style, though it is so time consuming if your project is large since you have to constantly turn the quilt.   In fact, this little guy is probably one of my all-time favorite quilts.  The color combination is just lovely and the way it crinkled up in the wash is so perfect. 

For the back, I cut strips of the two green solids used on the front, then cut the ends at 60° and sewed 'em up Jelly-Roll-Race style. 

Pretty, pretty.

Both quilts will be donated through Bay Area MQG to the Stanford NICU program Blankets for Babies.