U and U QAL: fabric choice for Overlapping Octagons

I've decided to join in The Unconventional and Unexpected Quilt A-Long . I have admired Sujata Shah's work since I bought her book,  "Cultural Fusion Quilts". The inspiration for this QAL comes from the book "The Unconventional and Unexpected", by Roderick Kiracofe

I decided to join after much deliberation. After all, "Do I really need another project?" "Yes", I answered myself, "You have to move on and this will be a new challenge."

My fabric choice is this:
 

blue and neutrals: a bulging bucket of blues and the right hand pile in the box. My supply of neutrals is very low,and in need of urgent replenishment.

with a few splashes of:

orange: starting with the scraps on the left.

Yesterday I started sewing blue strip scraps together along the short ends as leaders and enders in another project. These will be chopped and sewn together with others to make the string rectangles in the Overlapping Octagons. I shall be ordering more neutrals/ low volume during next week.

My plan is to cut the fabric freehand with the rotary cutter, although I shall be piecing the strings on phone book pages to keep them stable, as I can't manage to cut on the grain freehand, and would like to avoid wobbles and bubbles!

I'm already enjoying this project and look forward to sharing progress here.

Happy Sewing

Marly.