Last week I visited with a dear quilting friend who is in Stage IV Cancer. She blessed me with a pile of fabric along with blocks for 3 different quilts. I would like to assemble these blocks into quilt tops, quilt them and hand them back to her (or her 6 kids).

The problem is that the blocks are not all 12" blocks. In each set there are blocks that are 13" rather than 12-1/2" and others that are just 12" square. I have sash material picked out from her stash but how do I handle the different size blocks? Would it be as simple a making the sash that much larger for the too-small blocks? What do you do with the blocks that are too large? The blocks themselves are goregous. The quilts each have 12 blocks. Would you just pick out the best 9 blocks and work with that and forget trying to incorporate all 12 blocks?

Thanks!

If you want to incorporate all 12, then, yes, use fabric to build out the smaller blocks. It could be the sashing fabric, or you could build them out with a complementary fabric and still add the regular sashing that you are planning. Or, could you group the smaller blocks together, and treat them like a medallion in the middle of the quilt? Then you could add the larger blocks around them.

I would use all of her blocks by adding sashing around all of the blocks. So the sashing would be different sizes for the blocks but in the end all the blocks would be the same size.

Another option could be to use the 9 blocks that are the same size on the front of the quilt and use the remaining 3 blocks down the center of the back of the quilt.

How nice of you to take on this task for your friend!! I hope you can get one of them put together quickly so she can start to enjoy it.

Ditto to the PPs ideas!

I'm sure you have but want to make sure you have! .... press them up well, and re-measure all. Have you squared them up? is there any room to trim down any of the larger ones? If you have points, be sure you leave the 1/4" seam or you have another problem. Similarly, for the smaller blocks, could you stitch a slightly narrower seam and gain some width ... again attention to requirements as per the block design and what you can or cannot do. Or could you re-stitch any of the inner seams without a lot of extra work?

I was told one time that if there is only 1/4" difference then the stretching when you go to quilt it can help you overcome it. Better to be precise, but, there's some forgiveness there!

Have fun with them ... and bless you for being so giving to your friend.

if you do not want to cut blocks down to the size of the smallest block then the next best fix is adding sashing to each one, you can make the sashing kind of oversized then trim the blocks all to the same size. the slight differences in the sashings will not be noticable in the finished quilt.

If you have some orphan blocks, turn them into a pillow cover!

Also, just did the math ...
You have three sets of blocks. She has six kids.
What about two smaller quilts from each set, so you can give each a quilt from their Mom?

Instead of dealing with the confusion of different sized "sashes" - I would pick a size for all blocks - say 12.5 unfinished. Just add fabric to outer edges and/or square up to 12.5" if too small. What a nice deed.

What a kind deed. Sharon Schamber has a very good tute on Youtube on resizing blocks. I used this method on two log cabin blocks made by my friend and it worked very well.

This is a nice idea but this woman was a prolific quilter so the kids each have many quilts from their mom. I'm in the process of machine quilting a twin-size quilt for her now that she made for her just graduated dd.

I appreciate all the ideas---press well, measure, size them all the same with sash and maybe use 3 on the back side. :) My goal is to have them turned into quilt tops by next week so she and I can chat about how to quilt them.

Is this the one you meant?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6apl...el_video_title
How to shrink & square a block? (I just spent a good 30 min watching her videos! She is lovely and has so many wonderful videos. Thank you!)