Making Celtic Solstice: Part 4

Today Bonnie promised us an easy clue for Celtic Solstice... 4-patches!  When strip pieced, these little units go together super quickly.  Bonnie used orange and green for hers, but my color scheme is different.  I used red in place of orange, and light blue in place of green.

Here are my strips all cut out and ready to go:

I bought yardage in a few different prints in order to make this quilt.  I didn't have much in the way of scraps in the right colors, so this is what I call "planned scrappy"... where I have to buy a little of a few different fabrics to get the feel of a scrappy quilt LOL.

I'm working with 6 reds and 5 light blues at this point (though I used up one of them in this clue, I only have 4 left now).  Since I don't have many prints, I have to do what I can in order to get as many combinations of fabrics as possible, so it looks more scrappy.

To speed up piecing, I paired up all the strips of one blue and all the strips of one red together, and sewed them together.  Before pressing, I folded them in half (using the shorter of the two strips to measure this) and placed my ruler on top of the fold:

Then I used the heel of my hand to press down on the ruler, making a crease in the fabric:

Once the fabrics were creased, I removed the ruler and laid the strips flat.  Do you see the creases?

I lined up the creases of about 3 strip sets along one line on my cutting mat, then cut each strip in half along that crease.  This gave me twice as many strip sets to mix and match, which allowed me to get a greater variety of fabric combinations for my 4-patch units.

If you're behind on the clues, don't despair.  This clue really does go together quickly so it won't take much to get caught up.  Happy sewing!