RSC Sampler Progress

I was so happy to get my RSC sampler blocks done early and thought I would rush to the finish before everyone else.  Live happens though, and I am still plugging away slowly.

I was trying for a diagonal, corner to corner placement of colors.  It didn't work out perfectly of course, but in general, the top left corner was brown, next came pink, purple blue, teal, green, light green yellow, orange, and red.  Black filled in the bottom right corner.  I had 100 blocks, so I chose a 10 by 10 setting which should end up with a queen sized quilt after the sashing strips and borders are added.

I chose this light and dark grey fabric from Connecting threads for the sashing.  I think it would work in light and dark ivory or cream as well, but I was going for "modern".  Not my specialty, but I am branching out.

So I had seen an alternating split light and dark sashing and wanted to try for  a similar effect.  I started by cutting strips of dark and light fabric that were 3 inches wide.  I cut these into 3.5 inch rectangles and pieced them together to make a 6.5 by 3 inch sashing strip.  I sewed 90 of these split strips.  Of course it occurred to me later that it would have been more efficient to cut 3.5 inch wide strips, and sew them together before sub cutting them into 3 inch widths.  I guess that would have been too easy though!

The rows were divided into even and odd.  The odd rows had the sashing strips sewn between each block with the white facing down toward the bottom of the quilt.  The even rows had the sashing strips sewn in between the blocks with the white facing up toward the top of the quilt.  

The horizontal sashing strips are in progress now.  5 horizontal strips are light and 4 are dark.  Each takes two 3 inch width of fabric (WOF) strips sewn together.  Those are trimmed to 83 inches, which should be the width of the quilt  (10 six inch finished blocks plus nine 2.5 inch finished sashing strips and 2 quarter inch seam allowances on the ends).  

The first white strip goes between rows 1 and 2 with light and dark alternating down the quilt, ending with light between rows 9 and 10.  I've gotten as far as rows 1 and 2, but I am loving how it looks so far!  

The border will just be a slightly wider continuation of the same pattern.  Grey will frame the top and bottom -- 4 or 5 inches perhaps.  Then I'll have to do alternating blocks of light and dark for the side borders to continue the effect of the "split" rows.

I'll do a real tutorial when I have it all together, but I think you could get started if you are planning on a similar setting.  People are doing all sorts of different finishing so far.  So much fun!

I had the nicest comment from Pamela who is a "no-reply" blogger.  She just found the RSC Sampler from a Facebook post. (Thanks Andee!).  Anyway, she was having trouble with three of the links from the RSC Sampler tab at the top of the page.  I fixed those and they should be working now.  Please let me know if there are any other issues or questions.  

I am SO much enjoying seeing all the samplers starting to come together.  Angie commented that I must feel like a mother hen.  I really do feel so proud and am enjoying all the wonderful block collections and projects that you are creating from SCRAPS!  

Congratulations to ALL the participants and followers.  What a wonderful challenge this has been for these last few years.  Even more great scrap using projects are already in the works for next year, so I hope you will all think about joining in -- again or for the first time.