Which ever way that you are doing it, it is a short seam and you will end up with a bunch of strips,
WARNING!!!! keep your strips straight and don't mix them up, it is easy to do and then yo will be trying to figure out what end is what and what matches with what and it is easy to end up with pieces where they don't belong. when sewing I usually put a pin in the start of the row marking it the end, it helps especially if I am working on more than one row at a time, it is a lot of back and forth to where you have it laid out, but you really really really don't want to get them in the wrong order or they won't meet up with their twin when you then put your rows together to form your top. I stop and check regularly to make sure that it is all lining up, which they tend to shrink some when the seams are put in.