Mindbender

I seldom do paper foundation piecing. Too slow and fiddly. I also don't enjoy stitching strips to a muslin foundation to create string blocks.

When I found out that the January project for my 3rd Sunday Project Linus group was string blocks, I said thanks for the warning and started coming up with a plan for something I could do with those 2" strips that didn't involve stitching them on a muslin foundation.

This is what I came up with. I call it Mindbender. Don't look at it too long or it will really mess with your mind.

What I did:

• Chose 6 fabrics, 3 light and 3 dark.
• Stitched 6 identical, 6 strip strip-sets, alternating light and dark 2" wide strips.
• Pressed all the seams toward the side with the light strip on 3 strip-sets and toward the side with the dark strip on the other 3.
• Cut the strip-sets into 24 squares.
• Keeping the same fabric at the top, separated squares into 2 groups based on which way the seams were pressed.
• Cut 1 group of squares on the diagonal from bottom left to top right.
• Cut the other group of squares from top left to bottom right.

• Stitched triangles together to make 24 units.
• Stitched units together to make 6 blocks.
• Arranged blocks and stitched together.
• Added more 2" strips to create borders.

I like this well enough to do another sometime, but will probably do a different border. It's on my list of patterns to write and publish on my website. But don't hold your breath waiting for that as it frequently takes me years to get a pattern on my website. I wouldn't want to cause any misfortune to happen to you.