Meet you on the Courthouse Steps

The Long Time Gone pattern requires making 9 small Courthouse Steps blocks.

This was a great block to use  up some of the light and dark scraps I have been creating while making the previous blocks.  I began by sorting  my scraps into piles of lights and darks based on length.

Then, I started the first round by sewing two light rectangles to opposite sides of the center squares:

Then I trimmed them on two sides only:

For the next round, I sewed a dark strip to each of the sides that I had just trimmed:

And again, I trimmed them on two sides:

I continued in this fashion, until all rounds were complete.  The trick to keeping them squared up as I went was to always check that the lines of the ruler matched up to the sides of the middle square, as outlined in pink in the photo below.

There were a lot of trips back and forth from the sewing machine, to the ironing board to the cutting table for each round, but in no time at all I had 9 perfectly sized Courthouse Steps blocks:

Number of pieces in the Courthouse Steps section:  153
Number of pieces in Long Time Gone so far:  1189