Heartstrings Quilt finished!

Yesterday I finished a large String Quilt and it is now ready to be taken to New Zealand in January.
It is a gift for our very special friend Liz who has a special birthday coming up on 15th January,
We will be in NZ to celebrate her 70th birthday at a lunch party in a nearby café overlooking the beach.

I made my first Heartstrings Quilt back in April when we were in NZ and Liz admired it so much I decided that I would make one for her birthday.

 

Here is the quilt I made in April

 

 

And close ups of some of the blocks:

 

 

For Liz's Quilt I decided to use a solid centre strip in each block so that when the four blocks are put together to make a whole block the solid strips form a diamond shape:

 

The colours are actually a lot brighter than they appear in these photos.  Taking photos indoors on a dreary December afternoon in the UK doesn't work very well.  I hope to take better ones when we are in NZ!

Here's the finished quilt:

 

I am pleased with it and happy I managed to finish it before Christmas, otherwise I would have been rushing about like a mad thing before we left for NZ in the New Year.

 

I love making String Quilts - I am sure I will make another one next year.

 

This is my last quilt finish for 2015 so may I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

 

 

 

STEVEN'S SPIDER WEB STRINGS

I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED "STRINGING" STEVEN'S SPIDER WEB QUILT AND HAVE BEGUN TO QUILT THE BLOCKS IN QAYG METHOD.  THERE ARE 20 BLOCKS AND I'VE FINISHED QUILTING FIVE SO FAR.

(the center KITES are all music, math and engineering related as these are his interests --and the
STRINGS are various colorful prints with some of the same themes...this will be his "Going Away to College Quilt"; hard for me to believe that in 2016 he will be on his way.....tempus fugit for sure!)

I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season and get some time to "STRING THING{S} ALONG" ;--)))) here.

Hugs, Julierose, La blageuse

Greenwood Mennonite -- String Quilt

Each of these girls helped make the string blocks on this quilt. It will be donated to the Greenwood Mennonite School Festival on Nov. 7, 2015.

Spiderweb Quilt UFO

I have been busy working on my Spiderweb Quilt.  Last year my Patchwork Group was making a Group quilt for one of our member's Special birthdays - you know, one of those ending in a 0!

The Spiderweb design was chosen as it's easy for different people to contribute blocks.  We decided on the colours we thought were appropriate for our Birthday Girl, exchanged strips of suitable fabrics amongst the Group and I demonstrated the block by showing each stage by making up a set of examples.

These examples came out again recently as we are now making another Spiderweb Quilt, this time in quite different colours for the youngest of our members.  She has contributed to many "Special Birthday" and :Cheering Up because you are ill" quilts and we all felt it was high time she was gifted a Group quilt too.

Now everyone has made their quilt blocks I decided to finish a quilt myself by turning my UFO blocks into a quilt. A couple of days ago I took this photo of my progress:

 

Not a very good picture I'm afraid but I hope you can see what's happening.

Lots of bright strings sewn onto a white Kona cotton background triangle. 

 

I have completed more triangles since this picture was taken but now I have run out of background triangles so I need to cut more white 10" squares.  Only problem is, I don't appear to have an exact colour match.  I have three different white fabrics, none exactly the same shade of white! So I've decided as this is a scrappy string quilt anyway I am not going to stress about colour matching white fabrics!!!  As long as I have 4 of the same white triangles in each block I hope the shade differences will get lost amongst the colours of the strips and the Perle hand quilting I intend to do on this quilt.

 

Off to cut some more strings from my 2.5" strings stash.  It always amazing how many strips you need for these String projects - hence my stash of strips!

String-y Things Going On

It all started with a string stash I've been 

accumulating for the last year or so.

These three boxes plus another larger box with . . . 

these pinks, oranges, and reds.

You can read the whole story over on my blog,

but this project has moved itself to the top of my list.

First there were these blocks . . .

And then THIS happened.

CLICK HERE to see what happened next.

Quiltdivajulie

Joining String Quilt Blocks

You know I love Sujata's book Cultural Fusion. And as I've been working on various UFO's and writing my new book on crazy quilting, I used the Hourglass left blocks from Burkley's Baby Quilt.

These photos are of the start of a freeform quilt that will be machine quilted and assembled with QAYG methods.

So while this is not a 'traditional' string quilt, I think that Sujata will applaud my bold experimental style, using her left over Hourglass Blocks from Burkley's Baby Quilt in this new piece, I think they kind of liven up the strings.

I used these little blocks for a tutorial on how I join prequilted blocks to form a finished quilt.

Plus, I'm writing up a series on E-Book Publishing if anyone is interested in learning how its going for me and my new book on crazy quilting.

Pop over to Good Earth Quilting to read about my journey as an e-book publisher.

Happy Quilting!

Until next time,

Caroline

Strip piecing, finally used.....

I had a drawer full of strip piecing made in 2008.  I took them out and looked at them many times but just couldn't decide what to do with them.

More strips and below these some light blue and many other shades of green.

I decided to use a diamond Accuquilt Studio die to cut them.

I started out just putting the diamonds up on the design wall in no particular order.  I filled in with diamonds cut from batik prints. 



 

My two sewing friends came over on Wednesday and gave me opinions on the placement of the diamonds.  One of them sat across the room and watched me put them up and from there she could see things that needed to be moved that my other friend and I couldn't see while close to it.  I cut half diamonds from batiks to fill in on the edges.  

I will leave it open to the viewer's interpretation of what it is, a light shaft, or a waterfall, forest or mountains or anything else the viewer might see.  It is 37.75" x 64.5"

SPIDERS STRINGING

My eldest  grandson, Steven, will be going away to college in 2017--canNOT believe that one--I am olde!!

So, this is the start of his quilt to warm him in the dorm.

His favorite color is orange...and he is a math wizard and plays 1st  alto and soprano sax in his high school jazz band and 4-piece combo.

 Sooo, the stars (kite shaped) are  either math or music inspired prints and the first round of strings are all oranges.  The challenge here is making this quilt "masculine" enough and not baby-ish....

Here are my small 5" strings mostly free cut from charm packs and leftovers that I have on hand in my sewing set up near my machine: I see that I will need to be purchasing more oranges (ahem!! geeze, that's really a shame, right??? hahaha)

And here is the fabric that I feel would be apropos for the back of this quilt....

You can find out more at Julierose's.

hugs to you all on this (finally) rainy Friday  Julierose

Ripple Effect

This half-square triangle ripple quilt

is sort of a string quilt.

I pieced leftover strips and bits into blocks

and then cut them into large HST with my Go! cutter.

See more about this quilt over at my blog.

How are you playing with your strings these day?

A pressing matter of strings

My guild is putting together 8.5 inch square string blocks in brights

for a group quilt.

The organizer asked for 1.5 inch white strips on the diagonal.

She suggested drawing lines marking where that first strip could go,

but I used my iron instead.

I pressed each of  foundation blocks diagonally,

and then pressed by white strips lengthwise, right sides together

I nested the strip into the valley of the foundation piece

and sewed on the first bright strip.

Here are the 16 I made for the group quilt.

I stupidly trimmed them from the back,

so in some of the blocks the diagonal isn't in the centre.

Hope the rest of you have fun stringing along.

Four basic string quilt styles

I am giving a basic string quilt workshop at my quilt guild in a couple of weeks. In the morning we will look at the basics. My samples are ready. The starter is the top of the picture the light blue centre blocks. The my personal favourite the diamond string block (the black centres), then a two colour, or two value block and finally the sort of a spider web thing.
After lunch I am going to give them some ideas about were to go for inspiration so will definitely be including this blog. So there will be nothing wonky for my workshop but the afternoon inspiration will include some wonky ideas. Thanks to all who share here. Joanne

Busy Making Strings

July and August have just flown by. I've been busy making string quilts and attempting to get rid of diminish my stash.

This one was easy except for the piano keys I decided to add to use up more scraps. It took me longer to make that border than it did to make the blocks. Go figure!!

The fractured diamond came from all my green scraps, which BTW have doubled. How did that happen??

I love watching this particular design develop. Depending on whether you use a specific color to outline the "kite" shape and if you place one color as the "last sewn" such as the gray fabric I used, the possibilities are endless and awesome. This quilt was quilted by me...can you believe it!!! I'm taking a long-arm class and I can quilt on anything that I want. OMG, I can't wait to quilt another quilt top soon!!

Improv String or Chinese Coins

We formed a small book study to work through The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters by Sherri Wood. Her second "score" is strings. Here's my first top.

Improv String #1

We discovered we have much more to say and chose to spend another month on this topic. More details on my blog.

Enjoy the day!

Ann

Annette's String Quilt

This beautiful scrappy string quilt was made by Annette. Notice how she changed the center strings of each block from orange to golden yellow for the border blocks.

A couple of antique string quilts

These two beauties are in my collection and I thought it was time to give them some air!  This one is a top that I have never quilted because I thought it would ruin the value.  My late husband fell in love with it as much as I did; we bought it at an antique show, but I can't remember where.  In any case, I have been told that it is clearly an African-American work of art because of the way the strips are laid out. Isn't this wonderful? It is a top that I would estimate is late 19th-very early 20th.

This one is very heavy, big stitches, backed with homespun (with a few mouse holes) Strings - same vintage.  I bought this in Florida and it came from an estate in one of the Carolinas.

Now that I have been in Africa, it is obvious to me that these are African-American made. Strips are a traditional recurring motif in many of the crafts.  These are just a couple of examples.

So that's my antique string story.  Enjoy!

a bit psychedelic

Admittedly, it has been forever since I've posted here (let alone on my own blog - LOL). I sew with strips all the time, as you probably know: but string quilts are a rarity for me. 

Been busy teaching and traveling and recently got home from teaching at the South African National Quilt Festival in KwaZulu Natal --- and very influenced by the colors and patterns of Africa (not to mention the fabrics!).

I was blotto from the time warp, but happy to be back at my sewing machine after watching my students sew for a week.  About the only thing I could do was to finish the string quilt I had started before I left for a new baby my daughter's good friend had recently.

Finally got it together and quilted, but when I took a photo to post on my blog I was a bit taken aback on how totally wonky it really was.  But hey, string quilts are supposed to be wonky - right? And when you cut and sew without a ruler, that's what happens.

By the way, I might pass along something I finally figured out as I was sewing these strips down to the paper.  I realized that I only needed to sew one seam to the paper: set the first one down and put one on top of it, as usual.  Sewed the two to the square of paper and folded the paper back. Then I just sewed one strip to another without the paper, used the paper to trim when I was done, and only had one seam to rip. OTOH - maybe that's why this looks so wacko.

Cheers, everybody!  Enjoy.

warm regards,

Rayna

Red and Green Strings in Rectangular Blocks

I prepared a red and green string quilt as a project for our Possum Town Quilters.
Using an old algebra book for foundations we placed a yellow strip diagonally in each block with
red on one side and green on the other side.

 

Carla, Lawana, and Carol sewing strings.

String quilt

I finished a string quilt this week.

String quilts are my favorite kind of quilt!

These were hand me down scraps.

Someone else's trash became MY TREASURE!

More about this quilt on my blog here

String block layouts

We are doing a scrappy string block swap at my guild, and I have made a few suggestions on how this type of blocks can be stitched together. I first posted them on my blog Mrs Moen and Brenda thought some of you would like to see them too, so here they are.

 

Straight

 Diagonal

 Vertical zigzag

Horisontal zigzag

On point

Adding solid fabrics will calm down and tie all the colours together. This will also make it easier to piece the blocks together with regards to all the seam allowances. 

 Diagonal with sashing

 Straight with setting squares

Diagonal with setting squares

Have fun:)