MerryMabelMarket calls this a crayon quilt, for the colors rather than the construction: twenty six strips cut at two inches, sewn into sets and cut across. What makes it worth watching is that she does two things the books say not to do, on purpose, and says why.
The first is the strip sets. She chain pieces the whole way, strip after strip in the same direction, and does not touch the iron until all twenty six are sewn. The Quilter's Bible warns about exactly this: strips sewn that way can bow or ripple, and it advises working in pairs, pressing after each seam, and alternating seam direction. She takes the risk and spends the time on the press instead, until every strip lies open at full width. She then cuts three sections from each set, seven inches wide, staggering them so the seams miss each other, then labels them. Slicing through five or six pressed sets at once is where the blade decides the result, and she reaches for titanium. One that skips on the fourth layer leaves a section that is not square. Ours are in rotary cutter blades.
The second is the border, and the better tip. Her piano key border, from the leftover strips, comes out half an inch too long. The Bible's answer is arithmetic: measure, subtract half an inch for seams, pick a border unit that divides in. Hers is to sew four or five slightly deeper seams in the middle and check again.
She calls it cheating and it is not, because in a piano key border the keys have nothing to line up with. The detail that makes it work is the one she flags: she never deepens the two seams at the ends, because the next border has to meet those, and they are the only two that have to land where the math says.
Underneath both is the same point. Sew consistently and you can stop measuring. She joins the sashing by looking rather than with a ruler, and treats being off a little and back on as the expected state of things. She shows the quilt in three colorways, one of them without the piano key border.
Cutting a two inch strip whenever the fabric is out is the habit this quilt is built on, and our guide to scrap quilt patterns covers sorting and storing them.
The channel is MerryMabelMarket. Her full video, a speedy strip quilt with a piano key border, made three ways, plays on YouTube.
