Strip Your Stash

I started taking the Craftsy class Strip Your Stash by Nancy Smith.  She has some great ideas for using strips to make quilts that are fast and easy.

I really like her idea of using photos that you like and using the colors in the photo to select fabrics that will work together. 

I must say that Nancy has a much nicer stash than I do.  At some point I got into a blue phase and so I have tons of blue fabrics that now are not very exciting to work with.  Perhaps I could add a little orange to spice up the blues.  However, I have very few orange fabrics. So perhaps I will have to make a trip to the fabric store.  I do have some yellow fabric and they would work as well.

I am would love to try out Nancy's strip techniques but I am currently making a quilt for the Calgary Flood Relief.  Hopefully soon I will get to try out strip techniques.

Heartstrings New Quilt Pattern

I have a new pattern in the latest McCall's Quick Quilts magazine called Heartstrings.  It is very easy to make in just a few hours and is free with the purchase of the magazine.  McCall's does such a great job of taking my pattern instructions and making them so easy to follow.  McCall's Quick Quilts Heartstrings


How to calculate the number of strips to bind a quilt.

It is frustrating to sew your binding strips together only to find that you are short and need another strip.  Here is the formula that I use.  Measure the width and length of your quilt.  Since fabrics come in slightly different widths, measure the width of your fabric with the selvage removed i.e. 40".  I subtract 2" from the fabric width to account for the mitered corners.
Use the following formula.

((quilt width + quilt length) * 2 )/ (fabric width - 2) round to the nearest highest number.

Example
(50 + 60)  = 110 * 2 = 220 / (40 - 2)  = 5.79 round to 6
You will need 6 strips to bind this quilt.