Originally Posted by PaperPrincess

If you look closely at the pic of the original quilt, it looks like the first (top) wedge is cut in half lengthwise, with the cut edge forming the top of the strip, and becoming its horizontal reference. As the rest of the wedges are sewn to this, they skew a bit so that if you drew a line down the long center of each of the wedges, they would be exactly horizontal (parallel to the top edge). If you don't cut the first wedge in half, you wind up making rectangles with the 2 wedges because of the complimentary angles.