String Block Tutorial

I didn't really know where I was headed when I started this quilt 7 years ago.  I just wanted to play with strings for a while and use up some of the strange strips that are always leftover when squaring up fabric during rotary cutting.   A string is any odd piece of fabric that is long and skinny.  I usually save anything that is narrower than 1.5 or 2 inches.  If it is wider than that, I cut it into strips or squares.

  

I like to use telephone book pages for my string blocks.  Any kind of paper works fine, but the thinner paper is easier to remove later.  Start with a strip of solid black fabric for the center.  I like to secure it temporarily either with a small dab of glue stick or with a pin.    Glue stick is one of my secret weapons for paper piecing.   It doesn't take much, but it helps keep everything where you put it.  

Now just dig through the scrap bin and find a strip of fabric long enough to go past the edge of the paper.   On the left side, sew a string of color and repeat of the other side with a neutral.  Sew with a nice straight quarter inch seam through both the fabric and the paper.  The paper will come out at the end, but it will let you know how long to cut your strings and help serve as the pattern.  Even with strings, it is still important to have nice seam allowances and straight seams, they don't have to run parallel to one another, but they should not be curved.  

Press the strings open on either side and you are ready to repeat the procedure.  It is OK if one of the edges is not perfectly straight.  You should still sew a straight seam, but you can use the top string as your guide.  Then you can trim the stray edge of just let it lie.  

Continue adding strings to either side until you get near the corners.   

For the corners, either try to use a wider strip, or find a triangle.  I like to use the extra triangles leftover from joining strips of binding.  If you have too many narrow strings in the corner region, it gets very bulky when joining the blocks together  

When you have covered all of the paper with strings, trim the block to 4.5 inches.   This is the most satisfying part of the process for me.  Like cutting the crusts off of sandwiches, it leave everything looking so neat and tidy!Then just turn the block over and rip the paper away from the back.  This is a messy job, but lightens of up the block and makes them easier to join.  

Finally, sew the blocks together in groups of 4.   The dark strings all point to the center of the block, leaving the neutrals to frame the corners.  

I have not decided on borders for my quilt yet, but if you are not adding a border, make sure to stay stitch the outside edges. There are bias angles everywhere and SO many seams which would like to pop open during quilting.  I think that I might add a nice wide black border to mine and then finish it with rainbow binding.   

Odds and Ends Bits and Bobs

 The girls wanted to watch a Christmas movie together, and that gave me the chance to finish off the last little bit of binding on Soul Searching.  It is officially done before the end of the year!

Next, I finished sewing the string blocks together into a flimsy.  I have made quite a few flimsies this year and not a lot of finished quilts but it is what works for me right now, so I am calling it a win.   

The weather is glorious today and I have the sliding glass doors open to let in the ocean breeze.  Now I have to decide whether to make some trial blocks for new 2021 quilts or settle in for some more hand quilting and sappy Christmas shows.   Difficult decision.....  I might go with some quilt block drafting.  I have a plan for a new challenge quilt!   I need to try out my ideas and do a bit more planning I think.

Strings

 I've been making string blocks for a long time now.  I am ready to be done with them!   If I use a setting with straight rows of color, it will be a very big quilt and I will need to make more blocks.  I do have one queen size bed that could use a quilt.......

If I lay the blocks out in diagonal rows, I have plenty of blocks to be done.   They are 8 inch blocks, so an 8 by 8 layout will make a 64 inch quilt.   I think that is a decision that makes itself.   I think I will go and pin the rows together before the dog scrambles the design for me.  Honestly, I do enjoy the diagonal swaths of color.   I should have just enough extra blocks for a baby quilt or a couple of throw pillows.  

We took a beach walk in the afternoon instead of this morning because it was a bit chilly.  Just a few hardy souls were out windsurfing in wet suits or huddled under blankets in chairs.   I have just started a roasted chicken in the instant pot for dinner.   We will find a festive holiday movie to enjoy after that or force the family into board games if everyone is in a good mood.  I do enjoy vacations!  

We are supposed to be seeing family over the holidays, but it is starting to look a little bit iffy.   My nephew is under quarantine after his girlfriend tested positive and everyone else has gone out to get tested.  I get tested pretty regularly with all my school exposure.  My most recent test on Sunday came back as negative.  

ScrapHappy Saturday

Pardon me if I'm a little bleary eyed this morning.  I was up late watching the government shut down.  I'm not going to go off on a political rant.  I think it is safe to say though, that everyone in Washington is pretty bad at running the government.  We have an air force base here, and NASA, so there will be quite a few people not going to work on Monday.  Hopefully they will figure out something soon, I'd hate for the Giant Panda Cam to go down. 
Today though, I will sew a little bit and clean a little bit.  Our neighborhood is having a party tonight.  Each house makes some appetizers and then everyone parades around from one house to another. The neighbor planning it is retired military and he has a schedule all planned out with a timer to keep everyone moving.  Kurt has a pork butt on the grill and we will make barbecue pork sliders.  First though, he's off to take Ryan to a math competition somewhere near Orlando and I need to take Sydney to school to finish off her science fair.  January and February are going to be a little bit frantic, but maybe it will slow down after that?  I always think it is going to slow down later, I'll let you know when later gets here. 
Hopefully you have found some time to play with your blue bits this month.  Misterlinky is below, please share with us all.  I've been playing with strings again, so everything is a happy scrappy mess at my house. 

Happy Scrappy Chaos

There is something strangely satisfying about taking a humble pile of strings, trimmed from the ragged ends and edges, and turning them into a bright and beautiful stack of blocks.  The greens are ready to be trimmed to size and joined together to make three more diamond crumbs.  It was a relaxing way to spend a morning in between the normal weekend chores.
Kurt has gone down south with the girls for a two day LAX tournament, and Ryan has a friend over to "hang out".  With just two days of school left, I think there might be a few more blocks lurking in the string bin.  First though, I'll hop over to Quilting is More Fun than Housework to see what is happening at Oh Scrap!

Another Checkmark on the List

Green strings are done.  This quilt started as a stack of leftover string blocks.  Most of those came from extra fabric leftover from men's shirt quilts.  That flimsy didn't seem quite big enough to make a quilt, so I dug deeper and found some crumbs. 

The back was also stretched out with some of the extra green checked fabric from the inner border.
I also added a new tab at the top for finished quilts and added this quilt to the list of finishes for 2015.  Now I'm off to see if I can add another quilt to the finished list for this year.  

Binding Time

There were three quilts hanging over the frame yesterday waiting for a turn at quilting.  This one was the smallest, so it got to go first. It started as a drawer of extra string and crumb blocks from my men's shirts phase.  The homespuns for the borders were really stretchy to work with.  I am thinking about blue for the binding.  As soon as I get it sewn on I will be able to settle in for some calm hand sewing time.  When I wasn't quilting this yesterday I got lots of laundry done, took Ryan to play practice and puttered around in the sewing room.  So nice to have a calm and peaceful weekend.  The men folk are off to Dungeons and Dragons this afternoon and Anna has a date.  That will just leave Sydney and I at home.  

Home Again

Being home again after vacation is always so much fun!  After the laundry of course.

My dining room table has been full of Lego Robotics since September.  Not that legos aren't fun, but tables are good for other things too.  

So between loads of laundry, I moved the robotics board out, and replaced it with -- gasp -- dishes.  Shocking, right?

Then I pulled out the strings and started to get a feel for what they will look like together.  These are all sewn together into groups of 4.   Not sure of the layout after that.  Though I like the idea of a row of each color, I'm not sure I have equal amounts of strings in all the colors.  Time will tell though.  

Weekend Recap

 I had a little bit of time on Saturday to whip up these blue string blocks.  Kurt was nice enough to take Ryan to FAMAT so that I could stay home. These are 4.5 inch blocks with a 1.25 inch black strip in the center.  I really like the contrast that the black adds.  It will look great with the pink scraps this month.  Best of all, it is now time to put away the blue and pull out the new color!  I made quite a large dent in the scraps, though there are still a few odds and ends to save for later.

 It was great to enjoy a little bit of down time on Saturday, because Sunday was all about the Regional Tournament for Legos.  We had one sick team member, and had to scramble things around a bit, but it was quite a fun day anyway.

And to top it all off, we earned a bid to the state tournament!  So now we get to keep going and going all the way to March!  We made it home in time to watch the half time show for the Superbowl and then everyone was asleep before the end of the third quarter.  It seemed like a really exciting game, but we were all just really tired out!  The next three weeks will be extra busy with science fair, but after that, maybe it will slow down again?  Maybe:)

Out of Chaos?

Out of chaos comes order?  Right now I'm not too sure about the order part, but I am creating quite a bit of chaos with my strings and crumbs.

Taking the paper off of string blocks is always fun.  There are bits of paper everywhere in a little path of confetti leading from the sewing machine to the iron to the floor.  I only needed 6 more crumb blocks for the border, but it isn't easy to make just 6 crumb blocks.  I've got the inner border sewn on, and I think I'l extend it out into the outer border.  It is some sort of very stretchy homespun fabric -- spray starch has been my friend today.  Then the outer border should be pretty easy and this little guy will hang for quilting at a later date.  The quilting machine isn't set up right now, I'll wait until there is a nice little stack of quilts and a chunk of free time.  Christmas break maybe?  Starting to get anxious about heading back to school.  Change is hard.  I had a dream last night where I was passing back papers, but didn't have enough.  I couldn't figure out where all of my papers had gone.  Sigh.  I'm off to sew the crumbs together to make a border.  Happy last day of summer vacation.  

Sidetracked Again

 So I dug out some batting scraps last night.

 And turned them into some quilt-as-you-go fabric

 Which ended up in the crumb box, where I found these crumb and string blocks from my men's shirt phase.

That's as far as I've gotten though, because the morning was our garage sale/lemonade stand.  Until it got too hot.  Then it was swimming pool time.  Which has just ended in favor of a late lunch.  I think we have a turn with a rented pressure washer next, but someday I'll get back to my fabric and scraps.  

No Sewing Today

Tonight was Anna's holiday concert for strings.  I am of course, the ever supportive mom, but beginning strings can be a little bit like listening to fingernails getting drug across a chalkboard.  They played all the songs they knew and then intermediate strings did a few as well.  There were cookies and punch after and we still made it back home in an hour. Anna had fun though and that is the point after all.
I got to sit with my good friend Meisje and chat for a while.  She brought me a present!  While visiting a historic sight over Thanksgiving she saw a quilt book and thought of me.  It is called Hidden in Plain View and is a story of the link between quilts and the underground railroad.  I'm looking forward to reading it.  She also loaned me the 4th book in the Anne of Green Gables series.  I've been reading it online which has been a little awkward.  So thanks Meisje, I'll have plenty of reading to enjoy over Christmas vacation. 

I was going in to work on the next Midget block this afternoon, but I couldn't find it!  I'm sure I put it right there on the laundry room counter where I put everything.  Hmm, maybe that is the problem, I put everything there.  So after the trip to the fabric store to get fake fur for an ice skating teddy bear costume and after Girl Scout but before the concert, I took a couple of minutes to put it all away. I also got the kids to clear all of their debris out of my car.

Though it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, at least there is a little empty space available again. I start getting a little anxious when things get so cluttered that I can't find what I need.  It is so much nicer when everything is put away that always wonder why I can't get it looking like that all the time.  If only there were more hours in the day.

GO Strings

I loved the idea of a cool string border for my quilt better than the reality. I can't bear to waste the string fabric though, so into blocks they must go.
It took less than 20 minutes to whip out 23 6.5 inch string blocks. I'll throw them in with my 6.5 inch crumb blocks and eventually there will be enough to grow into a quilt.

How cute do those look all laid out together? Maybe next time one of the strip bins gets too full I'll have a string sewing day.

Strung Out

The kids were up bright and early in search of Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. They spent the morning playing with the kites and outside toys they found in their baskets. I know there aren't too many years left of happy surprises and willing suspension of disbelief. I'm glad that we all pretended, at least for today, that magic is still possible. Ryan especially is always quick to point out myths, but he was happy enough to play along with our little game. Sydney is still enthralled with the wonder of it all. I know it can't last much longer.

I have 2 borders anxiously waiting for me to make some decisions, but today was not a day for decisions. I felt a serious need for some mindless sewing.

After pulling out the last of the scraps from my men's shirt quilts, I decided to work on some string blocks. I was sure I had done quite a few already, but maybe they got used in the nursing home quilts? I had phone book pages conveniently stashed in the same tub as the scraps and dumped them into a happy heap on the floor before diving in and sewing myself silly. I decided to work with a simple diagonal layout and finished up a goodly number of blocks. With the one still sitting on the ironing board, it looks like about 25. I took pictures along the way thinking I might make a quick tutorial if anyone is interested.

When I got tired of making string blocks, I picked up the trimmings from those and started making crumb blocks. I kept the trash can handy, and anything that was too small ended up finally retired. It is fun to think about the evolution of these scraps. They started their life as shirts before being worked into quilts, the leavings of those turned into string quilts, and the last gasping fragments made their way into these humble little crumb blocks. Looking at the picutures, I can also see some scraps my neighbor left when she moved away and some partial blocks from Carolina Crossroads. I think that was the first of the mystery quilts that I did. These little guys got squared up to 6.5 inches. I think I will set them with a wide blue lattice and some bright red corner stones.

Ryan had a timeline project due tomorrow so we finished that up after dinner. The kids are all fast asleep already. Tomorrow it's back to the usual routine of school and work. Just 5 more weeks for me, 4 until the seniors are gone. I need to get summer camps and schedules all pinned down -- it will be here before I know it.