I love the way Edward Gorey's mind worked!
Since my last post I have been cutting strips. Some 2.5" strips for more of the Scrappy Trips blocks but more 3 inch strips for another jelly roll style quilt. In fact, I cut enough of the latter for two quilt tops!
I had the idea some time ago to make a calendar quilt of sorts, featuring the novelty prints I've collected over the years for each holiday. Who knew it would be so easy to cut almost 200 strips?!
Well, maybe not that easy. My thighs are complaining about all the squatting and crouching I've done to paw through my collection and make my choices. I was pleased to be able to use up a few prints. There are still whole stacks for certain holidays though!
My plan was to use 3" raw strips, sewn with straight seams, for a top that would end up about 60 x 80 inches. My starter strip had to be at least 1920 inches long. It ended up being in the neighborhood of 1970 inches. I think. At any rate, I dumped all the strips into a nice big shopping bag, stirred them up, and pulled them out randomly to sew end-to-end. I continued to use the bag to corral the mess during the early stages of construction:
As of this writing I have one top all pieced. The seam allowances need to be pressed and then I can try to get a picture of it for you. We're having a lot of cloud cover and rain currently so an outdoors shot is out of the question. I may be able to pin this to my design wall (with some help) but you'll get a skewed shot that way. The rest of the house has poor lighting. Oh well, I do the best I can with what I have!
I'm thinking of trying to organize the placement of the prints in the second top. I don't know whether that can be done, or how successful it will be, but since I have two nearly identical piles of strips why not try it? First, though, I think I'm going to sew up a few small-ish scrap blocks just for the fun of it. ;- )
Isn't it great to work with so many strips already cut? This quilt recipe looks like a lot of fun, and what a great stash-buster.
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