Sweet and Sour - Ready to Cut

I'm going to deal with half of the 15 main fabrics at a time.  Each set will be cut in different numbers of strips, to provide more variety of patches.

First eight fabrics ironed and trimmed to 18" square

Aligned at top left corner - all fabrics face up

Trying out cutting possibilities - four strips, not bad

Couldn't find 1/4" tape, so pulled selvage strips from trash

Three strips - pretty chunky

Five strips - Like, but could get narrow, plus more seams involved

Decide to do 4 and 3 strips.  Using metal hairclips to mark approximate fourths.

Angled cuts

Next the strips need to be shuffled to create variety of fabric combinations in the four-strip blocks.  I use a Stack the Deck technique.

Design notes for the following photos

Leave the first stack as is.

Second stack - take top fabric and move it to the bottom.  Strip 2 will be on the top.

Third stack - take top 2 fabrics and move them to the bottom.  Strip 3 will be on the top.

Fourth stack - top 3 fabrics go to the bottom, so strip 4 will be on top.

Strips have been moved to the bottom

Sew four strips together, keeping the top as straight as possible.  I didn't have much trouble, even with the angled cuts.  Press seams however they want to go.  Repeat for all 8 sets.

First strippy block

While I'm sewing, the strips seem pretty wide, so I decide to do fifths on the next stack of fabrics.

Two sets

All eight sets are done, but I didn't take a photo of the whole collection.

The last design note:  When I woke up the next morning, I decided to put the jungle fabric and cowboy area together.  The reddish stripe will get chopped.