During our Stay Home, Stay Healthy orders, I’ve been attempting to tackle some long overdue projects and the clearing of storage bins in my garage. In my last blog, I showed you a quilt made from friendship blocks that were given to me. The sampler quilt here was made from blocks mostly accumulated over the last 20 years or so. For a while, I taught a Block of the Month class to a small group. Many of the blocks were created as demos to teach a variety of patterns and techniques. A couple were given to me by Joanne Bennett and Marcia Barrett. The fan on the bottom row is much older. It was a gift to me from my dear friend Anita Hejtmanek for my 30th birthday in my very early days of quilting.

The nine blocks placed on the diagonals, (variously named as Courthouse Square, Grandmother’s Pride and Beggar Block), were given to me by June Campbell. I loved the blocks and was surprised when she offered them to me. When I came to piece them together, I discovered the problem was that their unfinished sizes ranged from 11.75″ to 12.5″. The solution was to frame every block and then trim them all to the same size. This was successful and these small discrepancies in block size are not noticeable. The quilt is 84″ x 84″, and beautifully machine quilted by Wanda Rains.