Last summer I began to search the web for string piecing ideas, and came across the Heartstrings website, Bonnie's patterns, and of course, Gwen Marston's Liberated String Quilts. With that huge amount of inspiration, I began my own attempt, piecing blue and green strings on 6.5 inch widths of freezer paper, and using neutrals for the sashing and border.
I deliberately went wonky with this, curving them on the slight bias one way and then another. It was addicting. I had planned for this to be a donation quilt, a "something from nothing" quilt, since it was made from strings from my Mom's stash and my own, but I fell in love with it and couldn't give it away. Besides, I should have pieced it on a foundation, since there's lots of seams in this one, and a donation quilt should be sturdy. So I'm keeping it to machine quilt someday, and send off to college with one son or another.
Then I got out my bag of silk scraps and made this one, which I've shown before. It was inspired by all the doll quilts bloggers were making last summer in Chinese coins/string versions. And I couldn't stop there, so my quilt guild, The Strip Piecers, made our first joint project, the Lobster quilt.I've had a busy week away from the sewing machine, but I'm hoping to piece some more string quilts soon.
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6 comments:
A string quilt is on my "to do" list. I love string quilts. I want to make a string pieced start quilt. Bonnie started my appreciation of strip quilts, now I love strip quilts, too. After a game of strip poker, a quilter asked me what can you do with strips of fabric? OMG, lots of things!
Maybe I will make a string pieced STAR quilt instead of a start quilt. That's what happends when you let your fingers do the walking!
After looking at your pictures I'm inspired to try a string quilt too.
love your string quilts, especially the wonkiness of them - much more personality that way.
The colors of the first quilt are so alluring! I think you did a nice job balancing randomness and order. I like that you used more angles than a lot of people do, I much prefer this to the mostly straight chinese coins patterns.
I never do my string piecing on a foundation and I figure as long as I quilt it a bit close it should be fine. I hope that's true, for both our sakes!
I love them! Makes me want to start another string quilt myself but I've got several other to finish/start first.
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