Not too long ago I watched a video where the qulter pieced together all of her leftover 2.5” strips into long pieces. It’s actually a very well done video - I’ll post it below.

it gave me inspiration to try this. I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post that I’m really wanting to see my bags shrink and they really haven’t budged much in the last year or two. I know. I’ve been working on so many things - and I know that I used up a BUNCH of these strips for bindings last year for charity quilts. I think I figured I used the equivalent of over 65 yards or so of fabric which I took directly from my bags of strips. I just coordinated with the quilt top but used a scrappy binding for almost all of my charity quilts in 2024

Anyway, it’s time to see these bags shrink even more. They are very much in the way in my room and I’m not making fast enough progress, so I’m taking it to a new level.

Now the quilter in the video decided to use up her 10.5” wide strips by making a huge single courthouse steps block, but I don’t think I’m going to do that. I think I will make a simple checkerboard block quilt top.

I am using only blues on this particular project and will probably pair it with a bright red or bright pink or something else. I’m still trying to decide on that.

Let me show you what I’m doing.

First I’m going through my bags of blues - well, I’ve gone through ONE bag and part of a second one. I’m not sure how much more I need to go through to make enough strips as needed.

Let me detour.

I have made these kinds of strips blocks before.

I did these a few years back from my 2” low volume strips and made this quilt. I sewed together long and short pieces to form long strips and then just sewed those together until I had 8 rows of strips sewn together. I then subcut squares from these pieces. Let me find it here.

I’m leaving the picture very big so you can see those pieces. I made these 8 2” strips wide and then cut squares from those. I just had so many of these leftover 2” low volume pieces. Many of them were leftover bedding pieces.

Maybe I should try this again with my low volume type backgrounds with my 2.5” strips. When I made this one shown, I was less than impressed, but now that it’s been a while, I’m fine with it. Since I have never done much applique, maybe even I surprised myself. :) In fact, it’s fine. Sure, I could have done a better job with my wobbly stemmed flower, but sometimes, in real life, they really do have weak stems!

Anyway - back to this one.

Let me show you some sort of how I envision this working out. I’ll draw it up in the Electric Quilt program.

Here is a potential mockup of (all the same block) with reds and these blocks in a Quilt of Valor size. Naturally this is actually prettier as the colors in this drawing are limited and dark whereas I have pretty much all blues in these strips including a lot of lights. But I don’t want to spend the time making it more realistic.

Here is what it would look like in queen size with a green alternate block. I’m inclined to make this one as I know people would love this in these colors. (Thinking charity quilt here.)

This layout would be about a 90”x110”—a really nice long queen sized quilt.

I’ve already got these rolls made.

I need to go back through and trim them property and press each roll. But I’m trying to see how many I need.

As I go through the bags of strips, I am leaving the longer pieces and putting them back in the bags as I’m focusing now on the short pieces.

The shorter pieces simply are so plentiful and harder to use up and I have so. many. of. them.

Here is a pile waiting to be sewn together. There isn’t any more mindless sewing than this!!

So here’s another one of my to be finished 2.5” strips quilts. Maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll finish several in a limited time period and I’ll see great progress on my 2.5” series. We’ll see.

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

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Making Strips and Strips of Blue Pieces