Red Strip After Red Strip

So in April I was at home and finishing up a quilt, and my mom said to me, "I would love something like that on my kitchen table." I had been eyeing a pattern (Bargello) in Stashbuster Quilts (by Lynne Edwards) that used strip piecing techniques to create a quilt with a wave pattern. I bought the fabric for it right away, and then started the project in August. The blocks came together pretty quickly:

You start with color strips that are sewn from light to dark, and form a tube with the strips.

You cut the strips into various widths (the smallest one there in the center is 3/4" wide) and rip one of the seems forming the tube.

The strips then form a nice, neat pattern of undulating waves.

And then you sew. Something this wide (about 22 inches) ends up looking like this:

Each block ends up being about 16". (I haven't gotten around to measuring them exactly, yet, but that's the ballpark figure.)

Above: A block and a half. Do you see the penny for scale? I love the tiny, itty bitty pieces.

Six blocks sewn together equals this:

This is the way it will be oriented when it is finished.

Now, I'm not intended on making a full quilt with batting for a table. I'm going to layer this top with another one (more on that later) and use a layer of flannel in the middle. It's going to serve more of a decorative function than anything else, and no -- the table is not in a place that receives a huge amount of sunlight that will bleach out all of these beautiful reds too quickly. It's still a departure from tradition, but I'm enjoying it.