In my January 30, 2025 post I did some digital play with some variations of the Churn Dash block. One of the variations I came up with used a Shoo Fly Block, cutting it up and reassembling it. Here’s the Shoo Fly block. (It’s the Churn Dash Block without any bars in the outer middle blocks).

I sewed a 12 1/2 inch block and cut it in half vertically and horizontally. The Serendipity function in Electric Quilt 8 reassembled it this way.

Assembling a quilt using this block, essentially making a disappearing 9 patch block, creates the quilt in the photo at the top of this post. You could also make this block with a half square triangle, two rectangles and a small square. The finished blocks are 11 1/2 inches square.

As a California native, the quilt reminded me of an oranges growing on a tree. And amazingly, folks with California connections who follow my blog, all popped up with comments about the design. I hadn’t even mentioned California! So, based on their enthusiasm, I decided to actually make the quilt.

I was going to call it “Orange Grove”, but Carolyn Friedlander has a quilt called Grove (a Florida orange grove I believe), there is a wall hanging called Orange Grove, a quilt pattern called Orange Grove, and a quilting design also called Orange Grove. So, I’m calling mine “Orange Orchard”, a title which doesn’t appeared to have been used on a quick Google search.

I’m still thinking about whether or not to add a border to the quilt. So this quilt is still a work in progress!