A while back I picked up a shoe box full of 4-patches from a friend's yard sale. I am sure she had purchased them in a similar fashion years ago.
Fabrics look to be from someones stash over several decades. The 4-patches were hand sewn using 3" sqs. and a bit to wonky to trim up.
What to do?
I started by sewing in sets of four. The new blocks measured between 10 1/2 and 12 ". I pressed them and re-sized to 10 1/2" (I tend to re-size to whatever size sq I have on hand)
I had a rather large gold sheet set back to use as backing on a scrappy project. I just couldn't help myself and cut it up to make the setting triangles and strips to frame the alt. blocks.
Because the 4-patches were not all the 'same' size I bordered them first and then trimmed to 10 1/2".
My hope is that in the future when someone tries to copy this top they will drive themselves nuts cutting strange size pieces of fabric. (Just kidding)
I have a bunch of 4-patches left, I may take them apart to two's and make a chain to border the top. I can't imagine trying to sew this all by hand, it would have been a wiggly mess. My guess is the original maker had the same feeling about the blocks and that is why they were in the yardsale.
I will look at this for a day or two and decided on borders. I can see doing 3" of black and then 6 1/2" of a sky blue print (calico?)
Second choice would be take the other patches apart and do a checkerboard framed with more yellow.
