Sweet and Sour Blocks Progress

I made quite a bit of progress yesterday.  The blocks are really starting to look complicated--a good thing.

Design notes

Cutting the fat quarters in fifths.  Center strip cut first.

Five stacks of strips cut.  You can see slivers of the dark green.

Dark green slivers removed

In the center you can see slivers of olive left from the overlapping of olive and dark green.

Olive slivers removed

All fabrics returned to their original positions in the stack.

Applied a Stack the Deck technique to mix up the strips (see Sweet and Sour - Ready to Cut).

First set of five strips sewn together

Two sets of strips done

In the next step, horizontal cuts will be made, and combinations of four- and five-piece strips will be sewn together.  You can see an example above.

I drew four each of the four- and five-piece sets, alternating them 4,5,4,5, etc. in a stack--all face up.  I aligned the top left corners on the cutting mat, orienting the stack to make it easy to cut across it.  Note:  the black/green batik is the edge of the top strip set.  It's a little short, as you can see by the yellow print peeking out from beneath it.  The black ends at 16"; I'd like to end up with 15.5" unfinished, so I'm crossing my fingers that it will work out.

Strips sets ready for cutting in thirds.  Metal hairclips mark boundaries.  I considered cutting in fourths, but it would have meant more sewing, and I was afraid that the seams would line up too closely with the final cuts--roughly through the centers vertically and horizontally.

Cuts have been made

Stack the Deck applied again

First 4/5 block

Two 4/5 blocks

Design notes

With the first half of the 4/5 blocks done, I had to decide how to cut the second half.  I tried a couple of ways:

I like this one better.

All 16 of the 4/5 blocks are finished.  The narrowest block is 16", which is good.  The blocks will be cut one more time to incorporate the large prints, so hopefully I'll end up with blocks close to 15.5" unfinished.

I didn't go any further yesterday.  My color ink was very low, and Staples had already closed.  I thought about taking a chance with one of the two inket fabrics I have.  Good thing I didn't.  I printed a couple of things for another project, and the second page didn't print right.  At $9.99 for a 3-sheet package of inket fabric, I'm glad I didn't waste a sheet.

I bought more ink today, so I'll finish up the blocks.  Hopefully they won't take too long.