The “Rock Island Campfires” quilt in the July/August 2013 issue of Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting magazine caught my eye. What a striking way to use up some strips and strings! Click here to see the quilt designed by Marianne Fons.
Recently, while constructing a string-pieced stars quilt project, I determined that strip-piecing takes much less time than piecing strings on a paper foundation. So for this project, I decided to raid my shoebox of strips of various widths; most were cut from selvage to selvage.
I sewed about 5 strips together to make a strip set that measured approximately 7 1/4″ in width.
I cut 4 1/2″ squares from the center of the strip set, and I cut triangles from the leftovers using the “companion angle” ruler.
I sewed the triangles together and trimmed them to measure 4 1/2″ square. I can make about 10 strip-pieced squares from each strip set. This is enough for 2 1/2 blocks.
I assembled the pieces of each block as a Nine Patch, 3 rows with 3 pieces in each row.
I made some blocks with 4 matching squares. And some blocks of mixed squares.
Admittedly, the strip-pieced blocks have bias edges which can easily stretch. I discovered that the blocks stretched less if I placed the gray straight-of-grain pieces on top as I fed them under the presser foot.
I plan to make about 20 blocks for a lap sized quilt. I’ll let you know when I complete the quilt.
abyquilts 