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your experience with the pictures is just coincidence.... we all do our strip piece blocks differently... Personally, I do mine as a 'magic square'.... i make my blocks on a 13.5 base fabric/interfacing. I mostly use the thinnest, cheapest sheets I can find at the local thrift stores. Then i begin in the middle, corner to corner, sew and flip, sew and flip, working both ways from the center outward. then when i have 12 blocks, I place them face down on solid fabric...usually red, black or navy... then I mark the back of the block on the diagonal, just like a normal HST and sew all of them, usually just stitching over to the next square without clipping, then i cut all around the squares with my rotary cutter at the end... then trim, cut center seams apart and open... I have done it both ways, either across the strips or 'with' them...both look cute.... now I automatically have 24 blocks, perfect for a 4 x 6 block twin sized quilt, put on a border and go.... personally, i am happier with all the scraps if i have some unifying factor in them...

here is a pic of a quilt with 4 of these blocks in it... also there are several other designs treated the same way, because i wanted them all in the quilt (a block exchange with friends) and I wanted them to go together... [ATTACH=CONFIG]304708[/ATTACH]

you can see that this time i put them on across the strips... ps... the thin fabric stays inside... after finishing the piecing, i trim all the ends to match the base fabric, then when making the magic square i lose another tiny bit, so when trimmed, they are 12.5.... finish at 12... i always look for the old sheets on every thrift store trip...