Lots o' Little Nine-patches

I have belonged to a quilt guild for many years...almost since it started in 1989. I have even served two different 2-year terms as president.
In this guild, at the end of the first year the president receives blocks from the members. If you go for the second year, the gift is a quilt top (some presidents have even received finished quilts).

One time I requested blue & white nine-patch blocks because I thought it would be fun to have loads of blocks to play with. And I knew everyone would make a lot of blocks, because the pattern was easy. Somewhere in my stack of un-quilted tops is the lovely peice I made with many of the blocks.

In my process of re-discovering the floor in my studio, I found the remaining 52 blocks. I think I have also found the reaon why they weren't used.
These blocks ranged from the requested 6.5" (unfinished) size to less than 6"! Some of the edges seem to have been inspired by the Cubist school of art. One even had a pinked edge. Two or three were also questionable about being blue.
This is one thing I know from guild membership: your personal projects bear no relationship to Group Projects!

Group Projects (including large batches of blocks made by a variety of people) are an entirely different animal. They almost always involve "somebody" doing a major amount of work to bring all the items to a similar, workable size!
Since these blocks varied by less than one inch, I decided to trim them all down to 5.5". This made them the same size and balanced, though slightly off of a traditional 9-patch (I doubt anyone will notice).

Now it's just some sashing and borders and I'll have another top to add to my stack! Appearently when I made the original top, I made long strips of scrappy blue squares (now I really need to find that top because I can't remember what I designed!). There are loads of those left, too...so that's got to go in the border, since I'm trying to use up all this stuff! I would have used those for sashing, but after trimming down the blocks the squares will not match.
Design tip: if things don't match, they have to be really different. Close just looks bad!

Now I actually have enough floor space exposed to make it worthwhile to get the broom out and sweep up!