Lightplay

Lightplay is inspired by Strips that Sizzle by Margaret Miller. It consists of strips of various widths in two colors, and in every possible value of those two colors. COLOR SELECTION Pick two colors that you have a lot of, and that go together well. In each of these colors, you will need at least ten fabrics that range from almost white to almost black. You can even USE white and black with each color. You need about 6 inches of each fabric to make a big quilt.

BUILDING COLOR RUNS Yellow is the hardest, because yellow and black make mud. With yellows, you can choose to go dark into warm browns or greens when you go dark. With red, it is good to go from very pale pink to a very dark burgundy. With blue, it is easy – go from pale blue through blue to navy to black. With green, go from a pale mint through a deep forest to black. With grey, go from white to black. With brown, light beige to a dark chocolate to black. Violet goes from light lilac to deep purple to black. Orange can be taken through a light peach through coral to a deep rust to warm brown to black.

FIRST CUTTING Cut each fabric into strips of varying sizes from 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 inches. Cut long strips at the fold, so they are about 22 inches long. Ideally you want about the same number of each of the two colors. Don’t count, just eyeball the piles. Keep the two colors separate.

FIRST SEWING - STRIP SETS This quilt can be made with any size blocks, but for this one, make your strip sets at least 6 ½ inches wide. Every strip set will be made from one color and will go dark, lighter, medium, lighter, lightest. That doesn’t mean necessarily the lightest fabric in that color, just the lightest fabric in that particular strip set. If you have two fabrics that are almost the same value, don’t put them together in the same strip set. Because of the various widths, some strip sets may have 3 or 4 fabrics, some 5 or even 6. But they must all go from dark at one edge to light at the other, be the same color, and wind up at least 6 ½ inches wide. The object is to have no two strip sets alike – not a rule, but that is the idea. As you iron the strip sets, continue to keep the two colors separate. You want to have the same number of each color, more or less. Its good if some of your strip sets are mostly light, and some mostly dark.

SECOND CUTTING – Pick one color and call it the ‘bottom’ color. Don’t forget which one is the bottom color. Put one strip set of that color on the cutting mat, with the darkest side to your belly and the light side away from you, face up. Take one strip set of the other color, and place it on top of the bottom strip, face down. You will need a 6-1/2 inch square ruler. After arranging your strip sets so they are nice and parallel, you should be able to cut three 6-1/2” square sets from this. Don’t separate the top and bottom squares. Draw a diagonal line on the top of each square set. This part gets a little tedious, so I cut a few, sew them, iron them, slap them right up on the design wall and then go back to cutting squares. Make all your diagonals the same way, either / or \. SECOND SEWING- Sew ¼ inch from the line, on both sides, and cut on the line. (You knew that, right?) Iron them open, with the seam allowances going whichever way they want to. You can trim them to 6 inches if you like. Now the play begins. Slap them up on your design wall and start playing. Margaret Miller’s book Strips that Sizzle has lots of ways to set these blocks, and you’ll find lots more. Arrange them on your design wall, and then get them sewn together! If you find yourself with lots of oddball pieces of strips and strata left over, it makes a great border, like I did in the blue and purple one.