Quilt of Many Blouses (and a Dress)

In amongst all the mitt-knitting, I've started a new quilt.

I got into my box of leftover fabrics early in the week, and dug out pieces of fabric that go together - mostly blues and reds.  I thought for a while about how I wanted to piece them together, and settled on random strip-piecing.

I'm using the fabrics from my first Sencha blouse, my second and third Continental blouses, my Souvenir blouse, a Sorbetto top, and the Cambie dress, alternated with the white dotted Swiss from my Violet blouse.

I cut the fabric into strips of 2.5", 3" and 3.5", then cut the strips into varying lengths.  For the most part a print strip is alternated with a Swiss dot strip.  As a backing, I bought the same Swiss dot but in the reverse colorway:  black with white dots.  I've been ogling that piece of fabric for quite a while, but I don't really wear black, so I'm happy I found a good use for it!

I'm shooting for a finished width of 45 - 48", and a length of 70 - 72".  I've already made 10 strips, which is probably about a quarter to a third of the top.  I arranged the strips yesterday (in hopes of sewing them together today) and the result is kind of like multi-colored subway tiles.

My plan is to bind the edges with solid red.

When I sew a garment, I always over-buy my fabric by about a half yard to give myself leeway for making mistakes.  So you can imagine how the leftovers start to pile up!  A lot of them have been used for making box bags, but the stash accumulation is one of the things that inspired me to start making quilts.  I didn't really realize until I got into the box how many garments I've made in reds and blues!