Roman Stripe in progress

Looking through some boxes of fabric recently I stumbled across some blocks and partial blocks made by Shirley, my friend's late mother.  There were a couple whole blocks, and lots of striped triangles.  Looks like she made a red/black/white Roman Stripe quilt for a grandson.

A quick trip was made to the fabric store to pick up some solid red and solid black to match what she used.  I cut some triangles and finished up some blocks over the weekend.

Problem.  The pieced triangles are all different sizes.  Rejects from her project obviously.  So why wasn't it obvious to me that I needed to make them the same before adding the solid triangle? So now some blocks are 8", some 8 1/2, some 8 3/4 and some 9 inches.  Two are 9 1/4!   I'm trying to keep as much of the top corner fabric as possible, so just lopping off two sides doesn't work. And, of course, the diagonal seam needs to be from corner to corner exactly.

Undaunted, I'm stitching a few of her seams a little deeper, measuring from the diagonal and re-cutting so they are all 8 inches square.  I'm not going to be crazy about things matching up perfectly.  It's just exciting and challenging to make a little something from leftover scraps.

There are 25 blocks with black and 9 with red.  I tried a layout using them all, but in the end, two separate small quilts looked best.  Here's the red one that I finished up today....

Wow, the flash really made that solid red POP!  In daylight it is much closer to the border color.  Perhaps because the solid red is a blend and not 100% cotton.  But, that's what she was using in the 80's and it looked better to keep the same fabric for all of the blocks.  I'm looking forward to trying some free motion feathers or something interesting in those big red triangles.  Any suggestions?