Churn Dash

The next section that I worked on for the Long Time Gone quilt was the little Churn Dash blocks.

The quilt pattern calls for 21 churn dash blocks, divided into two groups, a group of 12 and a group of 9.

I had a lot of fun with my favorite part of quiltmaking, which is choosing the fabrics.  I  picked 21 dark/medium prints I wanted to use and then selected 21 lights to go with them. Here are the pieces ready to sew.

After sewing, there were lots and lots of little half square triangles, and a stack of strips which I  then sewed into pairs.

For accuracy, I initially cut the half square triangles a little larger than the pattern called for, and then trimmed them down to the right size after sewing them together.

The one on the left still needs to be trimmed.

Here is what was left on the cutting mat after all that trimming!

After I sewed the individual units for the blocks, I tried arranging them both ways before deciding which I liked best:

Nine small pieces that got even smaller after being sewn together:

At last I had 21 churn dash blocks all sewn up:

I divided them into Light and Darks depending on which fabric was the background fabric. Here are the lights:

And here are the darks:

I sewed them together into two groups of 9 blocks, and held off sewing the last 3 darks to give me more flexibility when I assemble the quilt. It's too early to tell if I might want to add some lightness or darkness to their section of the assembled quilt. If I need to, I can always cook up 3 more light ones to make that section the group of 12.

Number of pieces in the Churn Dash section:  357
Number of pieces in Long Time Gone so far:  784