Ellen 1

Adding "coping strips" was a very common thing to to in the past. Just try to match the color/value of the fabric you are sewing it to. If the match is good no one will notice, unless you point it out.

petthefabric

For the blocks in which the butterfly is to edge of the fabric, the portion too close to the edge could be released and reattached after adding the coping strip.

I would also wash them before moving forward. They might bleed or shrink, distorting the background.

Painiacs

Live to see what you decide

Pepita

W e don't know what the backing fabric is, plain white? I'm appliqueing a more modern quilt where the appliqués run off the background onto another block or border. You could rip out some of the ones that go all the way to the edge and add as someone said coping strips, I'd tend to do several pretty narrow ones to all of them making all come to the same size. That way it will be harder to tell which ones are different sizes. I'm guessing they were orphan blocks for the very reason you are scratching your head now.

Peckish

Sorry, I misread your first post. I interpreted what you said to mean you only had 4 blocks.

karenpatrick

I had that same problem in a quilt I made of a daughter of a friend. She found these antique blocks in her attic and asked me if I could do something with them. They were all different sizes so I appliqued them to background fabric blocks of the same size and then used sashing strips to set them apart. Check out my avatar. It's the quilt I'm talking about.