Collaborative piecing

On Saturday we decided that we would  concentrate this month on making filler strip and border sections. We are all  going to make tubes with 5 1/2 inch by half the width of the fabric strips of black  on white  fabric (mostly white) and 2 1/2  to  3 1/2 inches by half  the WOF of bright fabric. We will slice the tubes into rings and cut the white fabric  a bit off center and sew the resulting strips  together. It was Fran's idea to do it this way and I like it. 



I wanted  to see how it was going  to look, this is step by step how I did mine. 



Step 2



Step 1

Step 1 The  2  strips are sewed  together and pressed to the bright



Step 2 On the right, fold up along the length so  the right sides  are together and the raw edges  meet and stitch to form a long tube. Don't press the seam at this time.

  

Step 3 Cut the tube into strips (rings) of various widths  I think I like 2 3/4 to 3 1/2 inches. I forgot to take a picture of this step.

Step 4



Step 4 Fold so the seams are  offset by 1/4 to  3/8 of an inch and cut the white fabric with a scissors. Press to the bright fabric at this time.

Step 5 Sew the strips  together with a 1/4 seam.  Press all the seams in one direction.



Step 5



 

Step 6  Trim to the determined size. We will  be trimming to 6 1/2 inches. You can see that the top strip here will determine where this piece is trimmed as it is  narrower than the other strips. The reason for that is that I had 2 1/2 inch strips of that white fabric and made a regular strip set, my bright fabric was cut at 3 inches. To be able to get a good offset I should have made the bright strip 3 1/3 inches. I think maybe the bright strips should all be closer to 3 1/2 inches give or take an 1/8 inch. It  would  give enough variation  to just vary the width of the slices, that would make it easier to offset. Next time I will know. Maybe someone else  will have a better idea. We are  all  doing this off the top of our heads so there are bound to be more ideas. It  seems to me a good  idea to pretty much  line up one side when sewing the strips together as you can see on the  right  side in Step 5.

Here is the strip all  trimmed. The photo on the left shows the top 3 strips are wider. I thought they looked too chunky and stitched  another line 1/4 inch away from  the existing seams between the blue and red and the red and yellow. I like it better.

Next month when we get together we will all bring the tubes and  we will slice them up and mix them up and stitch them together. 

So far we don't have a concrete plan about what we will do with them.  Will they go on the  quilt  we  have  been working on or will  they go in another quilt?  We'll see. Sounds like fun to me.