Update: Random Reflections 1 of 2

I have finished making 10.5" strips -- finally. It felt like I would be doing that forever, but it really only took about 6 hours (including ironing time). Instead of aiming for four 10.5" strips from each of 40 materials (as the recipe calls for), my goals was to get 6 from each of 42. I didn't quite make it, but I knew that would be more than I needed. A few strips only managed 5 pieces, while others made 7, so I think the total averaged out to be what I was aiming for.

Piecing together the strips into blocks was easy after making all the strips! The only 'rules' I cared about were avoiding identical patterns next to each other and avoiding identical heights next to each other, so this was idea for a sloppy kind of never ending piecing. I would do a couple pairs, then pull one off to turn into a trio, another pair, then match one of the pairs and the trio into a set of five. This way I never really quit piecing, but I didn't end up with a huge string of 2s or 3s either. About every 4th set of stitches I was completing a 5 wide block.

I took some measurements off my current quilt, which is about 53x86 and realized that I needed to make some of my blocks 7 strips instead of 5, but other than that everything came together quickly. Ironing all the seams in the same direction took a couple hours, but was well worth it again.

Again following only my two rules, I pieced together my blocks into super long strips. Each of these longer strips is made of five 5 strip blocks and one 7 strip block. I have nine total long strips that will be attached together into random reflections (plus one that won't have a reflection) to make the length of the quilt.

According to my math, my entire top will be made up of 288 strips. The recipe's 60x60 quilt calls for 180 strips! Although I have quite a bit of leftover solid, my print leftovers at this point are very, very slim:

the leftovers

Four tiny strips - plus two 1" or smaller pieces -- pieces too small to use. I suppose one could make 1" print 9.5" solid strips, but I found that 2.5" print was about the smallest I wanted to go, just for my aesthetic. I did make a couple 10" print strips, but found that was really too long. I tried to keep most of my print strip pieces between 2.5" and 9.5"

I've tried to keep my seam allowance accurate throughout, but as I've been matching up seams to make the reflections, I'm realizing that I was nowhere near as accurate as I'd hoped. There's a surprising amount of give and take, especially once I get to the solid on solid part. I think this solid has more stretch than the prints, something that worries me for the future (both quilting and wear). I've had to go back and tighten a couple seam allowances to make things line up, but out of 288 strips, three or four fixes isn't too bad. I'm planning to do my best on the print meets print seams, but not to stress much over the solid to solid seams when I begin piecing the reflection dual strips into the full top.

I did lay out my strips and check for any random reflection print overlap -- I did not want the same print on both sides of a seam so it looks like one long piece instead. Fortunately, I was able to avoid any overlap without having to make any changes. I did have occasions with overlap, but I was always able to rearrange the long strips away from that. Wrapping up the top of my Random Reflection quilt (what I'm temporarily calling "1 of 2") is within sight -- and after what seemed like a never ending few days of making the 10.5" strips, I couldn't be more excited to be seeing real progress!