What to do with 4.5" 9 patch blocks...
 

Last week at a guild meeting, I accepted quite a few 9 patch blocks. The block maker warned me that they were not straight. I took them anyway. They're quite pretty if you ignore the wonkiness. But - what to do with them?

I thought about it on and off all week, and finally a couple of feasible ideas flew into my brain. However, I'm pretty sure this is not a brand new idea...

1. Use the 9 patches to make flying geese. I tried it, it works, but I really don't like to make flying geese and the they were very bulky.

2) Use the 9 patches as corners on snowball blocks on a scrappy quilt.

3) Use the 9 patches for a 1/2 square triangles and put them together with my million other scraps to make a scrappy quilt.

I decided to do idea number 3, and have put together enough blocks to know I'm going to like the results. Even better, I'm reducing my mountain of scraps. Not by much, though.

When it's done, I'll post pictures. Just don't hold your breath! :)

one more idea...this works for all orphan and sampler blocks that don't match... sew a 2" strip along each side in a solid (matching or not, doesn't matter...)...now tilt a 12.5" square ruler till each corner hits the outside edge of the extra strips... the 9 patch will be tilted inside the frame and all will be 12.5 no matter what the original 9 patch was...

oh, deemail, another great idea :)
since the 9p's are not perfect, this would help take away from that

I have used this twice when 'winning' a bunch of blocks that were made by lots of people...they are never the same size...and then again when i had an assortment of sizes from 6" up to 12"... i just put them all in a frame big enough for the 12" and it looks so much better than the straight sashing, just because it draws your eye away from the 'non-matching'....

Pls forgive my ignorance - but how do you make flying geese out of a 9 patch block???

Deemail has the perfect solution. It will be a pretty quilt. I've used this method and it does work wonderfully.

What a great idea - i have made anote of this since I have several block also lol THANKS!!!

I used the 9 patches as the squares required for making flying geese blocks. . It turned out ok, but was very bulky. It also meant that I cut half the 9 patch off, effectively wasting half of each 9 patch.

Could deemail please put up some photos, I am a bit slow at grasping ideas, photos always help
Thank you

Could you cut them into 4's and make a disappearing nine patch? Would that help or exaggerate the wonkyness?