Scrap Fun!!

Today I was doing some more quilting and as you can see, I managed to add two more blocks to my string quilt. I think it is turning out good and I am having a lot of fun seeing that I have made several blocks of string quilting but no whole quilt tops or finished quilts. Recently I have been working on a lot of quilts that in past years, I have actually put away and forgotten. It is fun to sort through some old projects and start working on them again! It's kind of like rediscovering old friends!

Also, with some of the scrap fabrics that I received in the mail, I added some hexagons to my quilt. For those of you that have asked, I am not piecing this by machine, I am using a method known as English Paper Piecing and you have to do it all by hand.

And as for my hand quilting, I have been working on and off on it today, doing a few stitches here and a few there... eventually it will be finished! Have a good and quilty day!

~Jordan~

Fun, Fun, Fun!!!

First off, here is something that I have been working on. It's a letter quilt and it uses Tonya's technique of making letters. I actually took the idea from her blog, but I am improvising. The whole block is 5 1/2" big and each letter is about 3" square.

And I started the quilt along from John's blog, in which we are making wonky log cabin blocks:

My desk can get very messy when working:

And as promised, here is a picture of the quilt that I finished for my brother Brandon's birthday.

He really liked it!!!

And if you are interested, here is the link to John's Flickr group. I hope to see you there! BTW, I managed to finish the third row of quilting on my quilt and there are about nine rows!! Six more to go!

Goodies!!

Sorry that I don't have any pictures but I can't find my camera. :-( Today two packages came in the mail... they were both filled to the brim with scraps! One was an envelope and the other was a shoebox. I was definitely pleasantly surprised! I am so excited to get started using them and I want to really bad! I just about died when I saw those packages in the mail! If anyone else wants to send me some "squishies" or any other type of goodie, leave a comment with your e-mail and I will get back to you.

As soon as possible I want to get ahold of my friend Elizabeth (she's 12 as well) and I'm going to teach her to quilt! Her family has a sewing machine but doesn't know how to use it... then we are going to start a book publishing, quilt making, pattern selling, fabric line creating business!!! I'm so excited!

Thanks again for those packages ladies! I am looking forward to them!

String Blocks

Even though this is only my fourth post, I am posting a tutorial! Today's post is actually going to be about making a string block and then I will show you my progress on my string quilt. I think that you will have fun following the tutorial and I will have fun creating it! Please excuse my blurry pics... I will replace them later on if you can't follow easily! Here we go!

The first thing you are going to need are strings. Strings can be anything long and thin and as wide as only 1/2". Here is a picture of my strings.


You will also need some paper backings of any size you like, (I used 4"), a sewing machine, a rotary cutter and mat, an iron and ironing board and scissors.

The first step is to lay down a base strip across the paper on the diagonal right side up and another on top of it right side down like this:



Then seam through the paper and the fabric layers like this:


Then finger press it open so that it looks like this:


Continue adding strings until you get to a corner and then instead of a strip use a chunk of fabric as shown here:


Here is a general idea of what your block should look like before trimming:


And here it is after trimming with your rotary cutter:


The next step is to pick the paper off the back of the block:


I like to have at least 4 block quarters before actually pulling out the paper so that I can make a whole block but you can do whatever you want to.

Now to iron it:


And here is the finished block quarter! You made it this far so let's continue...


Now we need to arrange 4 of these block quarters into a finished block, and then sew them together! Here are the pictures:





And last but not least, here is how my progress on my actual quilt is going!




I'm really enjoying making this quilt and I can only hope you do too!