While sorting my vintage fabrics, I came across a bag of 20 short fabric strips--all the same fabric and all measuring approximately* 2 1/4" x 6". I really like the print of the fabric so I looked for ideas of what could be done with them.
I decided to cut more strips of that same size from other vintage fabric scraps in my collection, and piece them to muslin. The muslin pieces were cut 4 1/2" x 6" ; each strip was stitched to a muslin piece along one 6" side. The pieced blocks were trimmed up to 6" square, raw, to finish 5 1/2" square. I made a total of 36 blocks.
I chose to set the blocks so that the strips would be on alternate sides of the block--on rows 1, 3, and 5, the strip is on the left side of the block. On rows 2, 4 and 6, the strip is on the right side of the block. (I am imagining some quilting meandering down between the colored fabric strips.)
Now that the rows were together, the small quilt top seemed to need a border. I had extra of the original print strips--those that were cut wonky or not quite wide enough. I designed a way to incorporate these wonky strips in the border.
Strips, three inches wide, were cut from muslin. Between those I made a very narrow border from three 1 1/8"x 6" (cut size) print strips, two 1 1/8" x 6" muslin strips, and two 1 1/8" x 3 1/2" muslin strips for the ends.
I liked the way these borders framed the small quilt top, but I now had to figure out what to do for the border corners. The leftover pieces of the original print strips were no longer the same 1 1/8" width. I experimented with several ideas before coming up with a design that I liked. I was able to use chunks of the trial corners in my final corner design. :)
The finished quilt top measures ~45" square. After being quilted, it will be bound with muslin (I have just enough left to make the binding!)
*Today, we can cut very exact pieces for our quilts, using our rulers and rotary cutters. I have no idea how these strips were cut--they did not all measure exactly 2 1/4" x 6"! The challenges of working with leftovers from our quilting fore-mothers! :)
