Prayer Flag Friendship Braid Quilt ~ Getting Started

While I was on vacation recently, I purchased a new ruler for quilting. I showed it HERE, along with other goodies from visits to two fun quilt shops. With that new ruler, and a Moda jelly roll I had been jealously guarding for quite some time, I made my version of a Friendship Braid Quilt. Keep reading to see how I did it.


First I took one last look at this lovely roll of fabric strips. It's April Cornell's Prayer Flag fabric line with soft shades of greens, blues, reds, yellows and some of my favorite print which is paisley.


I divided the strips into light and dark and cut the darks face up and the lights face down so that they would each have the angle going the opposite way.


Then I started sewing the odd little shapes together into the braid. The pattern I was following said to make some number of strips and then sew them together and trim off the tops and bottoms. I hate to waste fabric so the idea of cutting off the tops and bottoms of four or five of these strips just didn't sit well with me.


So I made two really, really, really long strips...


...and then cut them into 9 1/2 inch blocks using my Shape Cut ruler!


Once the strips were all cut up, I only had one beginning and one end of each strip leftover so almost no waste at all! I laid them out and started to arrange them in different ways.


After a while I came up with an arrangement I liked.


Once the blocks were arranged, I still had some issues to work out. The most important one was that all four cut sides of each block were now on the bias so I would have to be careful about how I joined them.

Next time, I will share with you how I solved that problem and show you the finished top and backing. One more ready for the long arm!

I'm still giddy over seeing my article on Basket Weave Stitch in Crochet Today magazine! Have you seen it? Click HERE to read about it. It's been the highlight of my crafting week! Do you have a sewing, crocheting, knitting or crafting project that has made you giddy this week?

Happy Stitching!

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