Long Triangles

While I was tidying up a pile of ironed fabric I found a heap of blue and salmon fabric that I had earmarked for this quilt about 4 years ago. A lot of them were from Spotlight's FQ sales, and they weren't really my cup of tea, but they were cheap, so they ended up in my stash.

I'd read on a blog somewhere that to create this long pieced rectangle shape you cut 5" x 10" rectangles, drew on the diagonal, placed 2 together with opposite corners touching, then stitched a quarter inch on both sides of the line. 

Cut on the line and voila! 2 pieced rectangles.

 I thought, that sounds too easy, so I had to try it, and it worked. 

There was trimming involved, but that never put me off, 

so I started collecting these fabrics and gave them a project box, and never really looked at them again.

On Friday I finally decided to make this quilt and get all that fabric either used up completely or the leftovers consigned to the scrap drawers. Of course I had no idea where the original idea came from, so there was a bit of experimenting, but it wasn't long before I was cutting and sewing and trimming and sewing, and it didn't take long to make enough blocks for a 48" x 64" quilt.

It was interesting, but I'm not sure I'd do it again. Sometimes I had to fudge the trimming because the pieced rectangle wasn't wide enough, and in a few places the points were off. A Tri-Recs ruler or similar was still need for the trimming; it all seemed a bit of a faff and not a shortcut at all.

Now I need to do a big tidy up. 

I think a Tumbler quilt from the leftover strips would be rather nice. It would be better to put these away as a kit, instead a box or random scraps.