Puzzling Parts Together

One of the things I’m noticing I really enjoy as a quilter is puzzling parts together - I love the challenge of finding ways to make a bunch of pieces fit. My latest finish in this vein is my second quilt comprised of what are commonly known as “orphan blocks” :

These blocks were all pieced by other quilters, and gathered into a large collection of blocks that our guild pulled from at our August meeting. I wrote more about that process here and after the collaborative design session I came home and moved the blocks around again and again until I found a composition I liked. I thought a lot about things I learned in Heidi Parkes’s Vignettes workshop as I moved pieces and parts into different places to try to find balance and keep my eye moving all around the piece.

My friend Fran Scher quilted it for me, and I love how the quilting appears in all the different sections

My first orphan blocks quilt was made almost entirely from quilt blocks from my previous quilt projects and was similarly fun to puzzle together:

I’ve also hosted two charity quilt months for my bee asking my bee mates to make blocks for me on a theme that then allowed me to puzzle them together - the first one I call “wild patch” and it was inspired by artist Ashley Brown Durand’s work:

The one I’m still working on is Green Leaves, which is a compilation of leaf-themed blocks from all my bee mates:

The question I’m curious about and asking myself, is how might I teach this type of concept? It’s so much fun to do, but I think it might be very challenging to teach. Part of what makes it interesting for me is the unknown, receiving blocks from other people and having a finite space to try to fit them in. There are quilting bees I really admire who create aspirational versions of this type of work, one is called BeeSewcial. I’ve thought about a class or workshop where quilters might bring a bunch of spare blocks and swap them, or one where quilters each make blocks for one another on a theme, but ultimately I’m not sure if this type of artistic creation lends itself to a classroom setting.

What do you think?