Quiltville’s Roll Roll Cotton Boll – Part 3,The String Blocks and How I made these in a jiffy!

The String blocks are up next. This is a photo of what two string blocks sliced on the diagonal and then re-sewn back together will look like.

We need 30 of these units for the quilt which means we have to make 60 smaller string blocks that measure 8-1/2″ square.

After I had completed about 6 string blocks I was running out of strings on hand and I found myself cutting strips. Yes, I had to cut strips! Uggh!

At first I was trying to be fairly accurate but after a few strips I had to ask myself “self, why are you being so accurate? These are just going into string blocks…just hack away!”.

So I folded the fabric in half so I had 4 layers and just used my scissors to cut apart my really wonky strings. It was a lot faster and I felt better.

Then as I was going to start sewing these to the foundation papers…as described in Step 3 of the Roll Roll Cotton Boll Mystery Quilt project I thought to myself once again, “self, can’t you just sew all these strips together and then cut out the block?” YES!!! So that is what I did…

Oh! Life was getting really great!

In what was becoming a very cumbersome step in this mystery now has me thinking I’ve got a great way to make it go much faster!

This is what I did. As I said, I first sewed the strings together. These were cuts made from full yardage of a lot of different fabrics. In the photo I picked out about 8 different neutrals.

I sewed until my strip unit measured a width of 13 inches. That was important because I needed to make sure my 8-1/2″ square would fit on point with enough wiggle room to center a strip in the middle!

Then I cut!

And with a longer ruler cut again.

And then used the 8-1/2″ ruler to cut out 3 blocks! There were also side triangles that with just an added center strip sewn together will yield another 3 more blocks! So all told, I can get 6 blocks VERY FAST from this technique.