Hello!

Now that I have in my head how to strip piece these out, I have begun!
Here is a pic of my strips. I have 8 of these 4 strip units.



Will post more when I have done more. Hopefully tonight, but I have my mystery to keep going on too.

Melissa

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1215375241.jpg

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1215375253.jpg

So, I sewed a bit more today. I took the 8 sets of 4 strips and first made them into 4 sets of 8 strips like this:

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1215555809.jpg

Then I sewed them into 2 sets of 16 strips. They will stay like this the rest of the quilt. I will take strip 1 and sew it to strip 16 and make a tube. Then, I will cross cut at every 5 1/2". After that, I seam rip in strategic areas, and I start putting the top together row by row. I'm not sure yet, exactly how to document that in picture form. But I'm sure I'll think of something. The 2 sets of 16 strips look like this:

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1215555798.jpg

Wow, this is great! I'm excited for you and your Step son! It will be beautiful!

How exciting..keep the pics coming, I love to watch a quilt "grow"!

Sure I'll keep pics coming. If I take pics as I go and post them. I'm less likely to end up with a UFO. :wink:

Good idea! :mrgreen:

I know your son will be proud of it. The patriotic theme is great!

I worked some more on Steven's quilt last night. I got quite a bit finished. I would say his quilt top is about 75% completed.

First, I sewed the first strip to the last one and made a long tube. There was no way to take a picture of that. Then I cross cut the tube making rings at 5 1/2".

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1216218925.jpg

Here's what one looks like open:

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1216218451.jpg

I didn't have enough fabric to make all 16 rows. I was one row short, but I knew i would be going into it. Here is a pic of just sewing the strips together and making the rows:

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1216218374.jpg

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1216218364.jpg

Since I don't have a pattern to work with, I made a diagram numbering each block. Then I took a small piece of paper and labeled where each row needs to be seam ripped to make the stair step design:

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1216218355.jpg

So now, what I need to do, is seam rip at each pin. That will give me the stagger pattern that I need. Then just sew the rows together and the top is done. The hardest part now is just matching my corners.

Ohhh I love as you go pics!!! It's gonna be an awesome quilt!! Keep up the good work and excellent idea on the anti-ufo method!! Thanks for the update keep em coming!!

This is awesome Melissa!!!!! Keep the pictures coming, it looks really great :)

Looks great Melissa! I don't know if you are familiar with Excel spreadsheets, but I found Excel quite helpful when planning the pattern for my first ever quilt - a baby quilt in pastel squares. I'm sure there are other proper quilting softwares that do this in a more sophisticated way, but this worked for me. You can colour the squares to get an idea of how the pattern will look, and cut and paste the squares to play around with the colours in different orders and configurations. I also numbered the colours in the pattern so I would know how many squares of each colour I would need. I have attached my spreadsheet so you can see what I'm talking about.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to use Excel for this? I'm such a newbie, :) I'm thinking - hey, what a great idea I came up with - but am probably way behind the rest of the experienced quilters here! :-)

To those of you who commented on the first Stairway to Heaven thread, I used those techniques to strip piece it, tube it, and cut in strategic places. It worked beautifully!! The top is almost d***!!! I just have to match my corners now...that's the toughest part!

good job this is coming along really nice...I like that your sharing pictures of your steps to buliding this lovely quilt. Thanks