A Desire for Churn Dashes

 Ever since I began admiring and making quilts, I have preferred the traditional styles. My grandma always made LeMoyne Star quilts. She made a lot of other styles, too, but that was a frequent go-to. While I make a lot of more modern quilts with some very modern fabrics, I still seem to prefer the quiet orderliness of the old standards, those made for generations by quilters who stitched out of necessity rather than out of fulfilling a whim.

My whim lately is to make a churn dash quilt. I have been planning for some time to make a quilt called True Blue, a pattern by Linzee Kull McCray. And my plan yesterday was to cut out the quilt to prepare for our upcoming quilt camp (more on camp in a future post).

Well, I didn't have the fabrics pulled from the stash, and I sorta' got side-tracked by some fabric I recently bought which was still splayed out on my desk.

I added a charm pack of Jo Morton shirtings alongside this grouping. The appeal was so great, I could almost feel a quilt being born.

One thing I really dislike is cutting into a precut, only to waste portions of it. I knew I wanted to use all the fabric - no waste. I decided that I would use those 5" squares for setting blocks. Out of the fabric grouping above, I would add other shirtings from my stash for backgrounds.

I spent a good little bit trying to figure out the math necessary to result in a 5" churn dash, but I did accomplish the task, and have made a good amount of progress. I am chain-piecing them, and so far have 15 blocks completed.

I am loving this! The blocks work so great with the shirtings, and they are super-easy to do. If I have calculated correctly (?), I will end up with around 60 churn dashes, and I have some remaining fabric with which to make more which is entirely likely. 

I do still plan to make True Blue. I will get that fabric pulled, and then cut before camp. At some point, I am sure I be working on both churn dash quilts at the same time. 

Happy Quilting, Friends!