Saturday 10 December 2011

Purple Strings!

Step 4 of Orca Bay came out yesterday.  This time, Bonnie is letting us play with our primary colour.  In my case, that means purple.  And course this is a Bonnie mystery, so that means more string blocks!  128 triangles, to be exact.

This pile of purple is now strings.  Soon (I hope) to become blocks.  I looked at Bonnie's directions, and all the cutting and trimming, and thought about alternatives.  Instead of 5-1/8" squares, which then get cut on the diagonal, why not a long 3-1/2" strip of strings, cut into triangles?  I don't know if that will save me any time, but it means I can simply cut all my bits to the same length to start.  I suspect there may be a reason my plan isn't ideal, but I'm going to forge ahead anyway :) 

Perhaps in the end I'll have a number of shorter pieces, and I'll switch to making a few squares to use them up. And I did notice as I hung my blocks that a lot of them have teeny tiny pieces in the corners.  Hopefully that won't cause me a lot of grief later.

In any event, here are my first 10 purple string triangles.  Only 118 more to go :)

6 comments:

  1. Now there's an idea. But I've already cut my phone book pages to square and found my purple HST for the corners (left over from my Old Tobacco Road). I hope those tiny pieces don't cause issues for you either. I love the fact that I have NO idea where this mystery is going.

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  2. hmmmm, I have not started on this step yet.... interesting idea.... I don't see why this wouln't work.

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  3. Since no one knows the next step (or what Bonnie intends to do with the stripped HST's), I'd guess her choice of method might have something to do with bias edges.

    The two different methods (1-cutting stripped squares in half, 2-cutting triangles from a stripped band) put the biases on different edges, which could be an issue later on, depending on how they're incorporated/sewn into the quilt blocks/top.

    Just a thought.

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  4. I also tried it this way...and it works, but yes, you can't tell where a seam is going to end up in the corner of a unit -- and it can add bulk to the next thing we sew it to. Also, I wrote the pattern the other way to make it more consistent between those who had the companion angle rulers, and those who did not. :c)

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  5. I figured out the same way of doing these blocks as you did. Hate removing paper. Nice colors.

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  6. Well I like the way you think!! This may be useful for future projects!!!

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