Strips and hexagons again this week – but not at the same time. Braid is an excellent way to use up left over strips, particularly those of different widths. Chris was demonstrating this at the weekend’s quilt show in Eccleshall. Starting with a triangle (these ones cut from 5 inch squares as they were available) it involves sewing strips to alternate sides of that triangle and trimming as you go. Chris had a bag of assorted green strips and a bag of assorted red strips beside her and just picked from each bag in turn and at random. To get the chevron effect half the triangles were started with the green on the left hand side and half with it on the right.
These sections were cut to the width and length of the ruler available on the day, which was a small one, but you can make your strips any length or width you like – the width is determined largely by the size of triangle you start with. If you make your strip really long (bed length) you may find it starts to bend like a banana by the time it gets beyond 4 foot – take care with the pressing to try to correct this; also, with luck, when you join all your bendy long strips together you can fudge/block (in extremis – dampen it slightly, pin it to the carpet so it is square and straight, leave it to dry) the whole thing straight!
You can be a little more ordered with your braid and cut all the strips the same width to start with.
You can piece the strips with contrast fabrics.
You can add squares to the ends of one set of strips so they travel along the centre of the braid.
You could make the strips on one side of the braid an equal width and the strips on the other side alternate wide and narrow and light and dark.
When you put the strips together you could separate sections with plain ‘sashing’.
You could make very ordered (in terms of colour and width) braid strips which can give a totally different look.
But didn’t someone say ‘hexagons?
Yes, you can make braid strips with these! They do need to be the same size, and actually they are half-hexagons . . . . but . . . !
These ones were cut from jelly roll strips, so there’s another way to use them up.
And if you fancy (or have to) use completely random strips in a variety of colours? Try to use darks on one side and lights on the other if you can.
And those pieces Chris was making last weekend – they may end up as a runner a bit like this
chris & barbara quilts 