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~

Work in Progress

Hi! Today I have been working on assembling a lot of those odd blocks of mine into a top. Some of them are paper pieced but most are just pieced as normal. Also, some of them are string pieced. Some of the designs I created myself, and those are the ones I am most proud of. The star string pieced block is Bonnie Hunter's Spiderweb quilt. I wanted to create a whole quilt out of those blocks but I ran out of the green plaid and a friend had given it to me... no way to track down more of it. So I ended up with about two blocks nagging at me. Most of the blocks, though, are ones that I just was testing a pattern and I decided not to make a whole quilt of them but I just couldn't toss them out. This is actually just laid out on my floor, though, not actually sewn so it's not really finished. I know all of you out there reading this have plenty of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) so I encourage you to assemble them into a top and get them out of your way!

Here you see the pieces that I am about to assemble into a nine patch. I am just working on random things right about now and these pics are from about a week ago...

And here is the finished nine patch! I really like the way this turned out and am probably going to do something with it... not quite sure what yet though!

Another thing I need to do next time I go to the store is get some piecing thread... I don't have any! I am most likely going to resort to drastic measures... hand piecing with the thread out of my sewing kit! lol! Also, if any of you have any ideas on how I could sell quilts to make some extra money, that would be most helpful. I want to be able to sell quilts so that I can buy more fabric! I don't really have all that much... well, I guess I'll post some more tomorrow. See ya!

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!