String Quilts - My favorites

ALL of these string idea quilts are because I was inspired by Bonnie Hunter at www.quiltville.com. She calls it something like String-X if you need directions. I even had her web page or blog as my home page for a time, because of her daily inspiration. Thanks, Bonnie.

My first try is D2R2 - an abbreviation for Dumpster Twice, Retrieved Twice! I did not have faith, and didn’t finish it with borders. I kept it for several years, and dumped it twice, when cleaning out drawers., then felt guilty, and retrieved it from the dumpster. Finally, not too long ago, I was asked to do a Trunk Show. I am a believer that we should show our ‘failures’ and well as our successes, so once more, I dragged it out and forced myself to add borders, and machine quilt it. Was I ever surprised that it turned out .. ‘not too bad’! Certainly it is not a heritage quilt, but it DOES make a great stash buster, and it is a reminder to myself, that just because it’s not perfect, does not mean it’s not OK.

Strings - baby quilt: Yellow and turquoise scraps. Who did I give this to?

Brights – wow! I made this from scraps from an earlier post - the Wonky Flying Geese with Neon green background. This is a lot livelier in person. It's been folded up in the closet for a while, hence the wrinkley appearance.

Strings - cozy brown/reds. I call this one that belongs to my DH, “His Girls” because the backing is all Pin-up Girls in provocative/lovely outdoorsy cabin-y type settings – those gals are pretty racey - !

Strings - purples and yellows. I had a lot of them and wanted to use them up.

I made one alteration from the original, on most of them. I felt the triangle at the end of each diagonal path needed to be added. The first one has a quick corner added to each side of a light strip, joined together, to make a point. That got a bit tedious. I wanted the triangle to 'float' on the light background, so I came up with the idea of using one long light piece for background on each of the four sides. Then, at the end of each outside pathway, take 2 triangles, sew them together along the short side to make a larger triangle. Face them with fusible lightweight interfacing, using a tight stitch, leaving the longer side (bottom) open. Turn it right side out, finger press, then insert that into the seam, between the background and the diagonal string, matching seams carefully, and sew. It really simplified making the point. Then when they are all sewn into the seam in the correct position, fuse/press it down. I later used invisible thread to do a tiny blanket stitch -- totally invisible.

I definitely learned that even though they are scrap, I should use SOME discretion when putting them together for a scrappy quilt.

All of these quilts were sewn onto a foundation, mostly telephone book pages. Several of them have been hand quilted, as well as stitch in the ditch in the long straight seams. They are not masterpieces, but intended to be used, and I love them all.