Bonnie, Please sit down first!

Tahhh Daaaah!!! Here is my version of a strips and strings quilt! I have 12 blocks done! And the reason I asked Bonnie to sit down first is that these were all strips and pieces of leftover fabrics from my Bricks and Stepping Stones and my Scrappy Bargello quilt that I ----- Bonnie are you sitting? ---- had thrown in the garbage can and pulled back out. (I'm ducking in case you throw something at me). I know, I threw them out. But I thought I had made such progress in actually hauling out all this old and ugly fabric and actually using it for something, that when I had all these little leftovers I didn't mind parting with them, so I tossed them. Well then I got thinking about all your strips and string quilts. I hate piecing on paper because I hate pulling it all off. But then I got this idea of doing a roman shadow type block! And pulling it all together with the black since I had to get some for my 4-patches anyway! And look how awesome it is! I'm so excited! But of course I have to pull the paper off yet.....

This is how I did it. I only had regular paper to work with at this point, but I did have some great cheap paper from Walmart that is thinner so easier to rip off. Since a sheet of paper is about 8.5" wide I cut off the ends to make 8.5" squares. Then I placed a fairly wider strip across the middle diagonally, and sewed strips on each side out towards the other corners. When the strips covered the full square I flipped it over and squared it up to 8". OK you ask why I did that? Well since this was cheap paper from Walmart, it didn't start out exactly at 8.5" wide and by the time I sewed all the strips on it shrunk a bit more also. But I wanted a good even square to cut the black pieces. So I trimmed to 8". Then I cut 8" black squares from my black fabric. Laid those on top of the strips of fabric. Drew a chalk line from one corner to the next on the diagonal (I chose to draw the diagonal same direction as the strips ran, but you could do it the other way also. Or some blocks one way and other blocks the other way). Then I sewed 1/4" on either side of the chalk line. Cut in half on the chalk line and pressed open and Wha-La! Scrappy Strippy Roman Shadow Blocks! I will now be using all my leftover strips to add to this quilt! Won't this be cool someday!