The look of the quilt is wonderful. I would enjoy doing this pattern. It is easy and it could be a great take-along project to do by hand while waiting for appointments.
I also wondered about using the strips instead of the white squares, because I could see all of the white seams behind the white stip. But then I thought, the seams do give it a definition that the strips would not.
To get the same definition, you would have to do grid quilting. On the other hand, you could do feather quilting in that long white/cream strip, which would change the look of the quilt quite a bit. One would make the quilt look like a long strip quilt like a "Chinese coin" pattern. The grid quilting would make it look like a patchwork quilt.
In any case it is a good scrap buster quilt. Hope this makes sense to everyone.