September Strips Cutting Report

I decided to apply some work to my bags of misc. little pieces and cut, cut, cut this past week. I had a lot of very odd pieces due to all those cosmetic bags I had made.

Before this past week, I had done no cutting.

But that’s because I had other things going on.

Besides starting on the charity quilting, we’re preparing for that wedding around here - well, I’m not really preparing for it, but it’s definitely on my list of things I need to be aware of.

She’s not my daughter, but we’ve been watching out for her as her parents are quite a ways away.

While I’m not preparing for it, I am helping with decorating, getting the chairs ready, helping the young lady with some food, and for example, finding the right buttons so her dress can be fixed. :)

We got the chairs all professionally cleaned and the rugs as well.  I had to be at the building while the men worked as I didn't want to leave the young lady there alone with unknown men.

So I’ve been doing stuff, but not much, really. It’s just that I have a vehicle and I can get places so much faster than she can without one.

Anyway, these are the totals. I did manage to clear out a bin of scraps that I had in my dining room. I also brought down a bag of misc things that I had in my sewing room. If I didn’t want to deal with it and it looked like it wasn’t either a 1.5”, 2” or 2.5” strip, I threw it in there while in my sewing room. I also sometimes threw in things even if they were one of the above due to trying to just clean up a bunch of random things.

What I’ve been doing is after I quilt for a few hours, then I cut for half an hour. I put a nice sharp blade in and then I can do it sitting down. Otherwise, it would be too hard as I do normally stand to get a better angle and pressure. But I’ve found if I am only cutting a couple of layers, with a fresh blade, the angle I get while sitting is sufficient. :)

So I ended up with a fair few strips in spite of only working on this trimming for a week.

2.5” - 3.5 lbs.

 

2” - 0.77 lb.

 

1.5” - 1.32 lbs.

 

I did cut up some of the smaller 1.5” ones and put them with my bag of 1.5” squares to be used for that Granny Square block quilt. Remember that quilt? Hint…blocks shown below.

 
 
 

So my totals for this year to date are here.

And my totals from the beginning of my keeping track and doing this are here.


Note: My 2.5” strips are going to get hit hard this year as I am going to work hard to using them for charity quilt bindings - mostly scrappy, matching the colors with the colors in the top. In this case, “getting hit hard” is a good thing. I’m trying to use up a bag or two as they are all in my sewing room and I need more room to maneuver! :) Each charity quilt that is about 60”x80” and needs about 300” of binding, so that is the equivalent of about 8 WOF (300/40”) strips. So 8 strips x120 quilts is 960 strips. The strips I use are 2.5” each. If I multiple 960 strips x 2.5” that is 2400” of fabric which is about 67 yards I should use up in strips!! That is really exciting!

I suppose a lot easier method of doing that is to say each quilt takes about 20” of strips for binding so 20”x120 is 2400” which is then about 67 yards (2400/36).

I love to use these things up and I love using them to help me speed up the process of making these charity quilts.

I already have a bag of already made partial pieces of binding which are all 2.5” strips. Let me show you those.

I will stop now and continue this theme when I share with you the progress on my quilting of charity quilts for 2024. I’ve been working on them!

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

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky Petersen1 Comment