Orca Bay Part 4!

As we are about 8 hours ahead of North Carolina, and not sure when Bonnie would post the next part, and being on leave for the day, I kept going to her site waiting with bated breath, will she or won't she use the reds! Eventually was making lunch and daughter casually mentions, it's the reds!  Well, better look at red scraps and strings, oh darn! hardly any; hmm,  daughter, says better get cutting Mam....

Starting pile of crumbs and strings

Didn't think was going to go very far, figuring out that will need at least double the fabric in the blue blocks.  Daughter has just finished piecing a quilt top and had used reds, kindly contributed all her leftovers, that sort of doubled the strings.

starting pile and daughters contribution

Cut, Mam, cut, she says... ok... and what fun!  The majority of my stash is made up of fat quarters, maybe slightly bigger.  All washed and obsessively folded the same way - I knew there would eventually be a reason for this!  I was able to selected from the red drawers, just unfold once, trim bits of ends along what would be the width and fold and return to drawers.  One or two ( really, when or why did I buy that!) ones got total chopped up.  Ended up doubling the pile.

Final pile of strings

In reading one of the blogs, the blogger mentioned the weight of her blue strings, so I thought that might be a good way of knowing how much more I might need if I use up this pile.  So out came the little used kitchen scale, and the pile weighs 774g.  Being able to travel sometimes and like to buy fabric at the destination, I know that about 7 metres of fabric weighs about 1kg.

Off to sew!  And just in time...

.... the postman delivered the rulers I'd ordered on-line from Fat Quarter Shop nine days ago, arrived intact - 2 sets, one for me and one for daughter.  They don't cost too much (7 for US$61.40, but it's worth buying more as the postage from USA to South Africa is steep (US$14).  And they had a discount coupon, so got 25% off price, but not postage!