I have a drawer that I keep “orphans” in.

Oh good lord, not babies, but quilt blocks. Ones that I used for testing or made for a quilt and decided they didn’t really fit in the quilt or a project that I was working on.

For instance, the heart quilt blocks were in there. Now they are either in a garland or in my newest WIP (work in progress).

This happy sun was in that drawer.

Sunshine was created for my daytime version of the “Tell Me a Story” quilt. When I started putting that quilt together I realized that the sun was just too small compared to the rabbits. So I made one a bit larger.

And this smaller but perfect version ended up in the orphan drawer. Poor little orphan!

And then I did some research as to where I got the pattern. I take no credit for paper pieced blocks. Way beyond my skill level! Took me awhile to figure out where I got the original paper-pieced pattern. It’s part of a PDF that contains several weather pieces. You can click on this link and check it out. The sun is the “heatwave” pattern. The method this website uses to paper-piece is different from how I do paper piecing. I did it the way I know how and it turned out great!

Anyhow…..

When I came across this happy block, I thought it would be a perfect wall hanging for my new and improved creative cave. And it would no longer be a sad orphan.

I added some borders with yellow fabric I had left-over from the yellow portions of the Dinosaurs quilt. Put fusible fleece on the back and wrote a little phrase in PhotoShop.

Used my light box to trace the phrase onto the border and did an easy-peasy embroidery backstitch with DMC 823.

Decided the phrase didn’t really stand out enough so I added another row of DMC 823 and then highlighted it with DMC 891.

I did some quilting. Nothing fancy.

I made a sleeve for the back. I machine stitched it on along the top edge before I put on the binding. I keep this black and white striped fabric in my stash. (I love it for binding.) Then I handstitched the bottom of the sleeve down.

I pulled some wall hangings and embroidered pieces from other rooms that I had made in the past and added all to my new pretty wall. And now I have a gallery of handcrafted pieces in my creative cave. I might be adding more. Someday. But for today, this is good!

So happy that I found a home for this sweet “orphan”.