Autumn Leaves Falling Out of the Blue

You don't expect a quilt to fall into your lap, but recently one did just that. Helgard, one of our church quilters, showed up with a small box a few months ago and in it was a partially completed quilt called Autumn Leaves. Her daughter had started it but lately it had been going nowhere so she passed it on to us to finish, with the proviso that whatever we did with it would benefit the church.

We eagerly dug into the box and did lots of oohing and ahhing about both the fabrics and the workmanship, but nobody jumped in to say that they would finish it. So, into the cupboard it went. Fearing that it would never be touched again, I later took it home to see just how much was still left to do.  

Something that had given us pause was that it was made using 'Thangles' and only Jan had ever worked with them before so I wanted to get a bead on that too. 

It turns out that Thangles are preprinted papers with sewing and cutting lines designed to ensure perfect HSTs every time. The quilt pattern looks like it was created in 2007 so I'm thinking that is about when Thangles came to market; they are still available for sale. I'll say more about them in another post.

There were 14 completed 12" blocks of two different types, one with a single large leaf...

and a second similar block with two smaller leaves.

In addition, there were various components, including lots of stem blocks. 

These were the blocks that scared me most because from what I had seen in the first viewing they were impeccably made and I couldn't imagine trying to match them, especially without the matching thread. I couldn't believe our luck when I realized that they were all made. Whew!

We still needed to make 7 more pairs of blocks - 14 in total - so I pulled a selection from the remaining fabrics and decided to get those cut....M