Churn Dash Drama

The Quilt Asylum held a Churn Dash block swap recently, in which I participated. It is my first block swap and was quite a challenge. My first set of blocks would not come out to the 9 1/2" size that was required. After I had cut all the pieces and started sewing, I decided I should measure these blocks. Well, they ended up being put aside after I tried to rip some apart and work them into the proper size. That was way too time consuming.

I had started my Farmer's Wife blocks using the Marti Michell templates and decided this is exactly what I needed to make my blocks come out to the proper size. I bought the appropriate templates and started out to make my 84 blocks. After testing the size and finding the templates did indeed make perfect 9 1/2" blocks, I am now hooked on these templates.

Now the drama is what to do with these blocks. I don't know that I want to just slap them together, although, I really do want a traditional amish looking quilt someday. My thoughts are to cut them up and re-sew them together. Kelleigh has drawn up a couple of ideas for me and so I may play around with those designs and then decide. Bonnie had cut a couple of blocks up and sewed it in this manner.

It was fun laying out the churn dash blocks and organizing them by colors. Kelleigh enjoyed putting them in some sort of order.