Children's Garden, Scrappy 5 x 7 Layout

Thank you, readers, for your thoughts and suggestions about layouts for this quilt.  I appreciate your input.  I discounted this layout at first because the blocks were two different sizes, but then I decided to just see how they looked with the flowers in the middle.  It makes me think of a flower garden.

All the blocks have plaids in them and I thought scrappy borders might work.  I talked to my daughter a little more and learned that the quilt will go in a log cabin in the Children's Garden.  It was then that I rethought the scrappy borders, thinking they might be too modern.  I started searching online for scrap quilts from about the 1860s onward to see what quilters then were using.  So I could see them all together, I pinned them on a pinterest board.  Look what I found.

The blocks are scrappy, sometimes with no two alike, and each quilt uses the same block pattern.  But in nearly all the old scrap quilts I found, the quilter used an additional unifying factor:  the same fabric in the alternate blocks, in the sashing, or in the borders, and sometimes in all three. 

I think Children's Garden needs a similar approach to fit in its environment.  So it's back to the drawing board design wall.  I'm spending odd moments on this quilt (because I have the other quilt to finish) but it's laying in a location where my husband and I can see it as we pass by. 

I'm also going to try a layout with 6 x 7 churn dash blocks.  If I choose the 5 x 7 layout (above) the inner borders on the longer sides will have to be narrower than the borders on the ends and I think it will look odd.  (I know you can't tell that from the photo above.  That's because the borders have taken up more space than they really have.)  The 6 x 7 layout will tend toward the square size but I think the proportions will be better.

If you have thoughts, suggestions, ideas about this quilt, I'd be happy to read them.  Thanks.

Happy quilting to you!
--Nancy.
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