It's Scrappy Saturday!!

 It's scrappy Saturday over at So Scrappy blog.  Angela is hosting the Rainbow Scrap Challenge where she designates a color or theme for every month along with ideas, and we pull our scraps in that color and make something.  This month's color is blue.  The goal is to use more scraps by focusing on a single color each month.   You can work on a series of small projects, a large one, or create individual blocks to go together into a single quilt at the end of the year.  I plan to make this quilt a bit larger and then use some of my leftover 1 1/2" strips to make blocks of some sort to put into a quilt at the end of the challenge.  

Since I have been working on the Roll Roll Cotton Boll mystery, I can't get enough of these string blocks.  They really kind of grow on you.  If you look at the photo below, the block with the bright fabrics on the left is how I normally make my string blocks.  If you look under my banner, I have a tutorial on how I make these string blocks.  I draw a diagonal line on a foundation so that I can center that black contrasting strip so that it creates a secondary design in the quilt.  For the string blocks in the quilt above, I did something different.  I made my string blocks by sewing the strips straight up and down on the foundation as shown in the photo on the right. 

For my foundation I use paper from this Scribble Pad that I bought at the dollar store for $1.  A foundation isn't really necessary, but if I'm watching TV or a movie, it gives me some sort of guideline to shoot for because if I'm distracted it is hard to judge what 9 inches really is.  An old telephone book would also work as a foundation, although I don't know how much longer we will be getting paper phone books. 

After I've sewn my strips to the foundation, I place them right sides together with the strips running the same direction.  I then draw a diagonal line from corner to corner on the foundation paper.  I drew dashed lines to show you where to sew, but you don't need to do that on your blocks. 

 Sew a quarter inch on both sides of the drawn line.

 Then cut on the solid line.

 You end up with two blocks that have strips that chevron. 

You can either arrange the blocks with the chevron all in the same direction like the left photo, or you can turn part of the blocks upside down to create a different look like I did in the right photo. 

I hope that you are finding some time to stitch this evening.  Thanks for visiting!