Heart Strings and a Mug Rug

I am still making string blocks.  As part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at So Scrappy blog, Angela designates a color of scraps that we are to use each month to help us use up our stash.  The February scrap color is red, and since it is Valentine month I made this Heart Strings quilt. 

And, since today is One Flower Wednesday over at Journey of a Quilter, I made a mug rug that has a hexagon flower on one half and a string block on the other half.

I am just loving these string blocks.  I sew them on pages from a Scribble Pad that I buy at the dollar store.  There are 60 sheets for $1, and the paper is like a porous recycled paper.  So when I sew on it the paper perforates so there really isn't any tearing to get it off.  It just lifts off.  And, I sew string blocks chain piecing style so they sew up quickly.  String block quilts are showing up all over blog land, and I am truly addicted to them. 

Chevron String Quilt

Since I'm the first one to post in 2011 - Happy New Year to all!  I've been working on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at So Scrappy blog.  Angela designates a color or theme every month and has challenged us to make something whether it be a small project, a large one, or to create individual blocks to make a single quilt at the end of the year.  This month's color is blue.  I decided to use some of my strips and make a string quilt.  I also did the Bonnie Hunter Roll Roll Cotton Boll mystery, and after I'd sewn all of those string blocks for the quilt, I kind of missed them so this is what I've been working on.

Usually I make my string blocks like the one on the left below.  I use either phone book pages or a scribble pad from the dollar store and cut foundations.  This isn't necessary to make a string block, but if I'm watching TV or a movie while sewing, I can soon lose track of how long my strips should be for a block.  Then I draw a line on the diagonal so I can get that black strip centered to create a secondary design.   To make the chevron blocks as shown above, I sew the strips straight up and down. 

Beginning of quilt with strips sewn on the diagonal. 

To make the blocks that chevron, you layer two blocks right sides together with the strips running the same direction.

Draw a line diagonally on the foundation paper.   Sew 1/4" on both sides of the drawn line. 

Cut on the solid drawn line. 

You will end up with two blocks that look something like this. 

You can also turn every other row of these blocks upside down to create a different look.  

 I hope all of you out there are sewing some string blocks, too! 

LuAnn

http://luannsloosethreads.blogspot.com/

Warm Moda Homespuns

Burrr.....Baby it's Cold Outside!!!

This is still one of my favorite ME sayings.

This sweet little warm Moda Brushed cotton homespun string quilt is going to a sweet new baby boy.

 

Last year my friend Sarah gave me a bag of Moda pastel brushed cotton homespuns.  Yip Yip Yahoo!!  This is what I made out of them.  Thanks Sarah :)

Picking Up the Pace ~ Again

Here is a top that I completed last year when we had our snow storm here in Raleigh, NC.

You can link back to see the post here

I just finished quilting it and also made a super terrific monogrammed burp cloth to go along with it.  This one goes to a sweet baby in the Soldier's Angeles Organization.  I ♥ the backing on this one.  

Spiderman

Here are the last tiny bits of my Spiderman fabric. Once again I have used the diamond string block. The diamond centres are black fabric with a spiderweb design. The blocks are 7" by 10" and there are 36 blocks in this quilt. It is a happy and bright one. Joanne H

Nothing Girly

Special request from a local Air Force family.

Nothing Too Girly 

I love girly, but I love how this one turned out.  

This is why I love doing what 

I do.

You all know that my special passion is making quilts for babies who are born while their daddies are deployed.   Right? 

I happened to find this blog while searching the Blanket Brigade website.  I was looking for a new family for me to sent a quilt to.  This one brought tears to my eyes.   Please read Mrs. P's blog.  Please continue to make your donation quilts.  Please keep donating them to any organization, foundation, hospital, charitable orgainzation, family, or someone that is dear to your heart.  

Our soldiers are dear to mine, forever.

Scrappy Border for my Green Strings

I made this string earlier this year when we first started the challenge and it has been waiting to have the borders sewn on. I finally got to it and made a strip pieced border from the leftover strings. I will be machinequilting this one soon I hope.

It's a Green Thing

A beautiful quilt for a beautiful birthday girl.

Happy 21st. Claire! 

So you know the saying "When Life gives you scraps, make quilts"? Right?

Out of a terrible tragedy, emerges this bright lively string quilt.  Without any details, my friend's daughter needed to come home from college for the weekend to spend time with her family.  She needed comfort and needed something to do quick to feed her soul and help with some healing.  So I taught them how to make a string quilt.  This all happened last year.  Well now mother and daughter are now hooked on quilting.  Yipee!! That's a good thing.   They finished the quilt and I sent it off the a long armer and I bound it for them.  We both presented it to the birthday girl yesterday, September 6th for her 21st birthday.

mom and daughter are doing wonderful!

Bright Strings

Hi  I'm LuAnn and this is my first string quilt.  This was not the original plan I had for these blocks.  I made a pile of smaller blocks and some larger blocks.  I thought I would set the smaller blocks in a 4 X 4 square in the center and then put an outer border of 5 of the larger blocks around the outside.  I didn't take into account that if you have an odd number of blocks the strong diagonal line goes up and down but at the corner it doesn't go back down again.  So I did some trimming, bordering, added a piano key border around the center and ended up with a quilt top.  I loved doing these blocks, and I'll do another quilt soon. 

Our quilt guild here takes donations of quilts for service projects, or they will take just the tops. There are a couple of meetings a month where volunteers gather and finish the quilts. Most of the time backing fabric and batting is donated. So I will either donate the quilt there to be finished and donated or I'll finish it and donate it to Project Linus.

This one has been ready to quilt for a while. It measures 42" by 64" and will be donated to my local Scrapbaggers group for distribution as needed. It looks like Bonnie Hunter's Spider Web pattern but I did not get it from that site. I have fallen far behind on the challenge. This is quilt number 8. At one a month I am OK but the challenge was two a month. I will have to get busy this fall. Joanne H

Finished!!

Because I sewed my strings for this quilt on a fabric foundation, it weighs a ton!! I broke many a needle. But once I found the magic combination of thread, needle and tension it went like a dream. I also stopped rolling it to get it under the throat of my machine and tried puddling instead. That made such a difference and everything moved along just great. And what a lot of bobbins to wind. All in all, it was an awesome learning experience for me and I am much more confident with my machine. Now I have to practice making another design instead of spirals! I have someone special in mind for this quilt.

Is Shabby still Chic?

I think so.  

Take a peek here at the shabby fabrics in our store.

Dear Blog,

Sorry I haven't posted as well as I should have.  I  have been super busy these last few weeks.  I do have a really good excuse.

  

My daughter got married.  Yes, I cried but not too much.

Now that the flurry of activity is done and the two are married, I can get back to my quilting life.  And I love it!

I managed to make a little Kindle Cover and working on a small table runner with one of my all time favorite fabric collections Paris Flea Market by Moda. 

Inviting y'all to come over to my other blog and take a peek at what I've been up to.  

Lots of activity and a special Give-Away.

July 4th Cyber Retreat!

It's another holiday and time for another cyber sewing retreat! Please go to my other site: www.susanround.com and click on the number next to the title post and you're in! Hope to hear from my former retreat guests as well as anyone new who has never participated in a cyber sew-in.

Just Sharing

From Jeane in Canada who doesn't 

have a blog :(

"I love making string quilts and they become very addictive.  I have a few on hand ready to be donated.  One isn't quilted but I thought it was interesting.  I got most of my inspirations from here.  I enjoy this blog.  I donate my quilts to our Cancer Treatment Center".

 Jeane in Canada

Hello, is any one home?

Where are all of the little quilters and bloggers who live here? It has become such a lonely little place. Come on back. Show us some more wonderful string quilts! I would show you one today myself, except I haven't finished anything new either. Hope all of your sewing machines are in proper working order and your fabric stashes are fat! TTFN, Rana

String Challenge #2 ~ Patriotic String Quilt

This is Rita and this is my second string quilt. I started this quilt way back in March, and I thought Memorial Day weekend was a good time to finish it up. It measures 52 x 66 inches so it's a fairly good size.  I’ll be donating this quilt to the Quilts of Valor program.

It all began with a pile of strings in patriotic fabrics that I’ve had for years. I still have a bunch left so I’ll be making another string quilt to use them all up … finally! 

Seems everyone enjoys making these string quilts as much as I do. I just love seeing all the projects ... they're all so inspiring!

Roman Stripes

This is Rana and I have another little quilt photo for you. This time I thought I would try a liberated Roman Stripes in pastel colors. It is baby sized and heavily quilted, as you can tell! I hope you are all still having lots of fun with strings. I know I am! The next project is going to be tan and pink with a little chocolate brown or maybe a sage-y green. Decisions, decisions.

First String Quilt

You can tell by the poor quality of the picture that I am a rank amateur, but it's all I've got! This is my FIRST string quilt, and I learned a lot! Lessons learned: (1) center strip is all-important! (so don't use dull gold and brown next time...) (2) save some bigger strips for the corners. (3) Figure out how to make the blocks so that they don't peak at the intersections.

I quilted it diagonally across the grain, plus in the ditch. Is that what caused the peaking? I did do FMQ feathers in the border, which I was pleased with.

All in all, I really enjoyed making this quilt, and donated it to the local Police Department. That is our guild's charity of choice this year. They use the quilts when they remove children from their homes.

Here is my next string challenge quilt. It is 48" by 60". Each small segment is cut 6 1/2". To make the block, draw a line on the diagonal of the base piece, place a light and a dark string right sides together and stitch them to the base on that diagonal. Then build up each side with either lights or darks. Joanne H

Double Pink

This is the tail end of the mauve fabrics that I own. Some are new Robin Pandolph's and Sandy Gervis' and some are old. There are even some scraps from the first curtains I ever made back in 1990. The very thought of mauve curtains, yikes!! But, they were cute in their day. And, now instead of decorating windows these fabrics will be warming babies. That's a nice little transition.

My Inspiration String

I made this string quilt to re-create the quilt top that a friend of mine had made. Check out my blog for the details http://bumbleknit.blogspot.com/

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Stacey's pink strings inspired me to try some of my own. Again the diamonds, white centres with pink and pink and white strings. Base was 7" by 10". This was donated to my local Scrapbagger group and will find a home as needed this year. Joanne H

Perfect Time for a Give-Away

**Leave a little bit of love!!  {That means a comment}**

Here is a set of 4 machine embroidered 6 1/2 inch snowball blocks.  

Get creative and let's see what you can do with them. 

Sweet designs from Hatched in Africa

Winner picked at random...soon..

Zizzybob is the Winner!

Yet another diamond string, beige diamonds this time

This quilt has more of a country colour look. The blocks started at 7" by 10". A friend was the source of the scraps. Joanne H

Red Black and Tan

Hello everyone, this is Rana. Well, I attacked my little pile of black scraps in the hopes of making them disappear. But alas, there were more of them than I thought! And I even sewed all of the solid blacks together to make the inner border and used Kim Diehl's scrappy binding idea to eliminate as many more as possible. But, it was a losing battle. So I guess I will just have to make another string quilt with black in it. What a pity! Can't wait to see what wonderful things all of you are doing with your scrap piles.

Finally a finish

This is a baby quilt. Final size 30" by 41". The starter blocks are the 7" by 10" rectangles with the 14" long, 2" wide centre blue strip. The peach coloured srips were cotton drapery samples.

String Quilts for the Little Wee Ones

I love how these sweeties turned out.  

It's gonna be hard to part with that pink and green one on the top.  {Oh, I love that one so.}  Well come to think of it, the pink and yellow one at the bottom too.  

I used to have a hard time making a quilt and then giving it away.  I kinda hoard my quilts.  But you know something, doing My String thing Challenge has made it possible for me to let them go.  Knowing right off that they are meant to be donated has helped me with that process.  Eight sweet little babies will get a special part of me. 

I now have 7 more to quilt and my first shipment will be completed.

I hope you are getting as much joy from making your quilts as I am.  Please let me know what your progress has been and where you have been donating any of them.  It's super special to see where they will be going.

Happy Quilting.

Stacey

{I'm Excited}

I just got a call from my Mom4RMarines contact saying that they need 8 baby boy, and 7 baby girl quilts.  Maybe I better rethink the lavender and do blue instead.  What do ya think?  

Since I tend to do girly pinkish prints, I better get digging into my stash for blues.  Good thing I've got a nice stash of about 10 string quilts all set and ready to go.  Guess where I'll be for the next few days?   In my sewing room of course.  I'll post my progress when I get them all finished.

These are all going to families at Camp Lejeune, NC.  

God Bless all of our troops

and their new little wee ones just born!

Stacey

I think in Pink ~ A Lot!

I have to admit. I think in pink a lot!  :)  Doesn't it seems like most of my string quilts are for girls?  What is it about pink?  I always lean toward that color.  Pink just shouts out to me 

{Use me! Use me! }

I have pretty much depleted my pink string basket. 

Maybe the next color to tackle will lavender.

A little Freebie to some lucky winner.  

Leave a comment and I'll pick a winner!

Soon!

*millie is my winner*

She is a busy lady.

She's got a fun blog too.  

Millies Quilting

Green Strings

here's my green strings. what fun!

A Green String Round-About

This is Rana, and I am sharing with you my finish for March. It is the green round-about string quilt I had started in celebration of St Patrick's Day. The blocks are 12" each so it is a nice size, a quilt for a child rather than a baby. The blocks were made with the connecting square technique, so each produced 4 half square triangles. These were pressed into service as a border. And, I am happy to say, that this pretty much depleted my green scraps! Now, I am off to use up all of the blacks, and some reds and tans too! And, I am looking forward to seeing what you all have coming along as well! TTFN.

Ahh!!! Back to my color-controlled life

Kind of random, but kind of planned.  A little bit at least.