Picture Frame Quilt Blocks

Our local cultural arts foundation has a thrift sale every spring. Last spring, I purchased this pretty frame.

I thought it would be fun to make some tiny quilt blocks to display. It was in my basket of things I should do something with, but I had forgotten all about it until I saw an advertisement for this year's thrift sale. Better use last year's purchase before venturing out for new treasures this year.

I pulled out my bin of unsorted scraps to see what inspired me. Originally, I thought I would try to stick with solids for this project, but then I saw the Kaffe floral print that is laying across my notebook in the above photo. It is one of my favorites and only continues to exist as 2" wide scraps in my bin. With such tiny blocks, these flowers would work great as fussy cut pieces for my blocks.

The smallest square in the frame is only 1 3/4" so that certainly limited the number of pieces I could work with in each block. The nine-patch block finishes at three inches square. I ended up with a square in a square,

a fussy cut flower,

a nine-patch (the photo is blurry but I thought it was fun that you can see my reflection taking the picture),

a rail fence block,

and a quarter dresden.

Here they are all together. I thought I would have to work hard to get them to stay in place in the frame, but they were easy to lay directly on the glass. The frame back holds them perfectly.

I love how projects like this evolve. This looks nothing like I had sketched in my notebook, but I am just as happy with the end result. What a nice way to spend an afternoon sewing.