Those Blue Strips

Remember those blue strips I worked up from parts of two of my bags of blue 2.5” strips?

I culled some of the shorter pieces and sewed them together to make some longer strips. I then pressed them and rolled them up into rolls. I then decided to sew 5 of them together to make a long piece.

Here’s what that looks like.

All this did take a bit of time. Just because it took only a couple of sentences to write doesn’t mean it was super quick.

I’ve worked up the designs I want to try with them - but this is where I’m starting.

Now, I’m ready for a quick finish with this project, so while I love the last one and am fascinated with the fourth one here, I will probably make one of the first three first because they are faster. In fact, I may try the actual courthouse steps one as was my original inspiration.

I like it with the bright solid red pieces which would help bring cohesion to this madness.

And while I’m ready for a quick finish with this project, I am still fascinated with the fifth version here. So, that one is probably in the forecast. That sashing block with the red star look seems pretty cool to me.

I have already started to cut up squares from them. With five pieces sewn together, I am going to end up with 10” cut squares.

They actually are coming in at about 10-1/4” instead of 10-1/2” which they should be if I had consistent 1/4” seams.

I figured I was often making sligthly larger seams because some of the strips are fraying a bit. So, I will trim the squares down to 10” and make the accompanying blocks also 10”. I’ve been uncomfortable thinking about trying to make these strip blocks match up to a slightly larger pieced or cut block. Even though it’s a lot of work to trim all the blocks, it will make for a much nicer finished top.

If I choose to start with the courthouse steps block (the second picture shown above), I will just trim my strips as needed. But I do think I will actually make numbers 2 and 3 to start with. Then, I’ll skip over and work on number 5 idea - and if I’m still feeling red/white/blue, I will go back and try for nr. 4. I could change colors, of course, anytime. This is all a work in progress, and while it is on the table, I’m just ‘thinking about it’ and always subject to change. I have bags of blue strips, so should this really be something I’m enjoying, I could do something like this with other combinations like blue/brown or blue/pink. It’s summer, so I’m thinking a lot about red/white/blue.

I didn’t measure the number of strips I really had to the exact inch or anything, but I took it outside and took a photo of the strip set which is what I will be using to make the first two tops. This is really less than half of the strips I already have sewn into those rolls shown above. I thought I’d see how this goes before I sew all the rest together into strips of 5.

And yes, I was risking it getting dirty with ants crawling over the fabric, but I did it anyway. Our cat, Tuq, was curious —What in the world? This is the photo of the same strip set - but one from the house into the yard, and the other photo is the other way.

After rolling this particular strip set up, it was this big. I put my hand there so you could see what it looks like.

So while I was hoping to show you finished tops from these blue pieces this time, I’ve been a bit sidetracked by other things going on here in Poland so I thought I’d just show the progress I have made.

I did do the math, and figure that I have enough already to go to make about 90 squares. That’s not really all that much, actually, so in order to get two of my tops done, I may have to make another big long strip set. We’ll see. I have plenty of already prepared rolls left to do that.

So thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky Petersen1 Comment