Month 2 sashing strips

[Barb A.]

Thanks, Marge, for responding so quickly.

Yes, I have extra strips - the ones that were cut to make the rectangle sets for the longer 16 1/2-inch triangle sets. It's as though I didn't need to cut all that fabric after all.

Barb

[Constance G.]

When I cut my strips, I cut all 24 (12 of each color) parallel to the selvage. That used up about 18 inches or so of the width of the fabric, but left a big chunk of each color intact. If you cut your strips from selvage to selvage I imagine there could be a lot of leftover fabric in strips.

[Barb A.]

Thank you Connie - that's exactly what I did. I thought I was following the directions exactly, but it's easy to get confused. (Well, it's easy for me to get confused.) I just wish I had not cut all those strips - would have had nice-sized pieces of fabric left.

Barb

[Margo C.]

Barb, if you run out of fabric that the instructions call for you will be able to order more from the TQS Shoppe.

[Gail E.]

Hello Barb,

I did exactly the same thing as you and ended up with approximately 29" of both the 8 and 16 strip sets left over. Now what to do with it ops:

Gail

[Margo C.]

My humble apologies for not checking the math on this earlier, but I think you will be OK with yardage because I think it was figured on the way the instructions were written. Just set those strips aside.

If you haven't yet cut your strips for the middle of this month's units, I would like to suggest that you try paper-piecing them using 6 sheets of graph paper for the foundation.
You can get 2 of the short sashing units from a single piece of graph paper so you will need 2 sheets marked for the short units.
Just tape 2 pieces of the graph paper together for the 16-1/2" units, and you will need two longer sheets marked for the them.



For cutting the fabric....just cut one piece 8-1/2" x WOF from the dark green circle print and one piece 8-1/2" x WOF from the red-orange swirl print.
Starch the fabrics.
From each of those fabrics you need to cut 24 strips 1-1/2" wide. Save the remaining pieces of fabric.

Sew the strips to the foundation, alternating colors then trim away the excess resulting in 4 pieces 8-1/2" x 3-1/2" and 4 pieces 16-1/2" x 3-1/2"

If you don't want to paper piece them you can just assemble the strips into pairs, using an accurate 1/4" seam allowance, and combine pairs until you get the necessary 2 sets measuring 8-1/2" and 2 sets measuring 16-1/2", then cut the strips into 3-1/2" wide units.

Many thanks to Andree community/my-profile/AndreeBergeron for suggesting this technique!

[Barb A.]

Thank you, everybody, for reading my post and offering information.

Gail, I'm thinking I'll just stash the 16 unused strips (surprise, we're quilters, right?) and maybe they can be incorporated as inner borders in a future piece. I was grateful to hear that someone had the same experience.

I was able to finish all the month 2 sashing with just the 8-strip piece, and am eagerly looking forward to month 3!

Barb

[Lotti D.]

Don't go too far with stashing those unused strips...
In the instructions it says to save all scraps, you'll be using them for the appliqué! :P

[Rita C.]

If you have so many strip sets left maybe you could use them to bind the quilt? You could probably do a single binding because there would be so much seam allowance so 1/2" strips would work. Just a suggestion.

[Margo C.]

Actually....the original quilt uses a single fold binding, but the fabric has been embellished with decorative stitching before the strips were cut,
so you may want to keep that option open!
Check this out! You can click twice on the photo to see an up-close and personal view of the stitching that was added to a solid red fabric!

[Gail E.]

Thank you everyone for suggestions, so lovely to be part of this caring and helpful forum. Margo that technique definitely looks like the way to go for piecing those strips, I will try it. Thank you so much for that comprehensive tutorial on strip piecing using graph paper, love it. However I have finished all the strips for this month and they seem to be okay as I pieced one of the rectangles and triangles yesterday and it worked out fine. (Thanks again for your video on accurate 1/4" seams). As for the rest of those strip units, they will be keepers. Looking at the pic of the finished quilt, perhaps those long green stems will be cut at 1 1/2" and Barb and I will be doing lots of unpicking haha.

Regards Gail

[Barb A.]

Those long green stems. Oh my. Well, Gail, I guess we will find out at some point if we have enough fabric without having to sew the green back together again. :lol:

[Susan B.]

Those long green stems. Oh my. Well, Gail, I guess we will find out at some point if we have enough fabric without having to sew the green back together again. :lol:

Well, the quilt is 79" by 79" and the green stems on the sides go from top to bottom. I have a feeling that we'll be stitching some strips together. How many ways can we make bias? I remember a Suzanne Marshall way of making bias from way back that was really sharp...might have to look that up.

[Denise L.]

Yesterday morning -before work - I decided I had to try to piece a strip set. Cut them and stitched. Pressed open the seams and measured. I was at 8 1/4. Mmmm? Back to pressing and using my best press carefully pressed again. Carefully is the key. Back to the cutting table, measured again. Lo and behold it measured 8.50. Sliced my first section,pinned and sewed. Came out perfect.

With everyone's helpful hints its like having a class on line. I certainly have learned a lot in the last few weeks.

Thank you

Denise

[Susan B.]

I was at 8 1/4. Mmmm? Back to pressing and using my best press carefully pressed again. Carefully is the key. Back to the cutting table, measured again. Lo and behold it measured 8.50. Sliced my first section,pinned and sewed. Came out perfect.

Denise, I did the same thing, but I did unsew a line or two. I used my good old Niagara and made the measurements what they should be, after careful cutting and stitching.