Monkey wrench blocks

I tell you, my friends have created a monster.  One of my friends, Carol,  from our Quilting Bee group gave me some of her scraps in strips.  They were all in bundles by size from as small as 1 1/2" to 2 3/4" wide by various sizes in lengths.

A few days ago I sorted these strips by colour to consider what I was going to do with them.  Some of the very small lengths went to the miniature log cabin blocks I was working on and some of them went into making these monkey wrench blocks (also known as churn dish amongst other names).

I feel these monkey wrench blocks have taken the place of the spools blocks.  Does everyone remember them.  Each spool used a dark and a light fabric and each fabric was used only once in the entire queen sized quilt.  Well, these are starting out that way. 

I had only one block done for the longest time, because I wasn't going to start this quilt yet.  Really, it's the truth.  I was content to just look at the one block on the wall, admire it and dream of what the quilt will become at some future date.  But with all this variety of fabric and small usable sizes, sitting in front of me on my cutting board, really how could I resist.  It would take me longer to organize the fabrics, put them away and at some future date, take them out and start cutting up the fabric, to just cut what I needed now while I organized to put away.

Ok, so that is my excuse, and I am sticking to it.  I just like to go with the flow.  Whenever inspiration hits, I go with it.  I seem to get a lot more done that way and I enjoy the process along the way.  I will just blame it on Carol this time, for giving me her scraps.  I am sure it would please her to know they are being used up.

Each block will have it's own coordinating fabrics, but aside from that they will be individual from each other.  Some will look very traditional in their colour way and others will be more spunky.  Some will be subtle and others will be loud.  The variety is what will make the quilt interesting.

I am having so much fun playing with these blocks.  While I was assembling the Midnight Flight quilt I was using these pieces as leader/enders along with the sixteen patch blocks.  They are very easy to assemble.

As you can see below I added another four monkey wrench blocks to my design wall.  This is all the pre-cut pieces I had at the time.  In the picture you can also see the three new added miniature log cabin blocks that I made recently.  You can see the layout of the block starting to take shape.

 

This little corner/section of the design wall is only about two feet square and just in this section alone we get a glimpse of seven different quilts.  Two are my daughter's and the rest are mine.  If you were to see my full design wall you may think it looked like a mess, but there is some rhyme and reason behind  the whole placement of projects.

I may go through that with you at another time, but in short the Midnight Flight quilt top, that you see at the top left hand side of the picture, is getting so big that it is taking over the design wall and covering everything in its wake.  By the time it is done the whole left hand side will be swallowed up.