Swimming in Strips

There's been a good bit of sewing going on here in The Magpie's Nest. I'm going to start with a top I mentioned a few posts ago but didn't have pictures of at the time.

You may recall that I've just recently boarded the jelly roll or 1600" quilt bandwagon. Now I can't seem to get off! When I went through my holiday themed novelty prints, cutting 3.5" strips, I ended up with enough for two nearly twin size quilt tops. This first top was made from strips pulled randomly from the shopping bag I tossed the strips into.

It seemed a bit busy to me at first. (You should be able to double-click on the photos to get bigger images.) I put it away for a week or so before pulling it back out to photograph it. I like it better now.

It's still busy though. ;- )  Also, all the red strips ended up at the perimeters of the final top. They're at the top and bottom, and clumped along the sides. I haven't sewn the second set of strips up yet. My plan is to organize them a bit rather than pulling them randomly from the bag to see what happens.

In the meantime, when I learned of the need for lap quilts for the Alzheimer's Disease Co-operative Study, in particular quilts in patriotic colors for veterans, I looked around the Nest to see what I had that I could turn into a quilt in short order. Lo and behold, there were some patriotic prints leftover from the Holidays quilts. Based on my experience with all those novelty prints I decided to throw in some not-novelty prints in red, white, and blue in an effort to create a calmer top. I think it worked.

Then there was the puzzle of what to do for the back. To accommodate long arm quilting I needed a back 48" x 54". The length wasn't a problem but the width created a challenge. It's just a little wider than the width the fabric comes off the bolt. But! I had a length of strips leftover from piecing the top. (When I pieced the patriotic strips together the initial strip for the jelly roll was  longer than it needed to be so I removed the excess before I started the folding and seaming process.)

All I had to do was add another strip to the patriotic print strip for length, fold it in half once and seam it. When it is inserted between the two halves of the width of fabric yardage I'll have the perfect back! If I exercise a bit of patience I'll be able to send two quilts to the ADCS instead of just one. :- )

I have also been sewing up a herd of scrappy blocks. That's a whole other post. But here's one I made from what was left of one of my patiotic prints:

I have continued to make Scrappy Trips blocks too. I'm close to having enough for a twin size quilt. I have a feeling that, like the jelly roll process, now that I've stuck my toe in the water there will be no turning back until I've swum across the whole lake!