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?