Anatomy Of A New String Quilt
A dear friend of mine recently got me to join a group called HeartStrings. They do a lot of charity quilts that specialize in quilts made with string blocks. Now, I've been doing that type of charity quilts for over 20 years, but I do my own sort... and what they do on the group were sort of "out of the box" for me. But I figured I would go through some of my patriotic fabrics and experiment a bit, and just see if I was happy with the results if I left my comfort zone a bit.
To start off, I'm going to be honest here... I was going to use up a few fabrics I wasn't totally crazy about. I figured if I didn't love the results, I could always incorporate the blocks into some scrappy string block quilts of another type. Plus, I wasn't as careful with the math for my center strips as I thought I was, and my 24 blocks turned out to only be 20, which didn't make as big a unit as I wanted, either, so that changed the game plan some as well! Anyway, here's how it went:
Using various strips of fabric from my stash, I made 20 blocks, trimmed to 9½"
Now, I know that block looks so busy that you wouldn't think it would make a decent looking quilt, but just bear with me! Here's what it looks like when you put together 5 rows of 4:
The problem is that this is just too small to be of much use! So, time to add some borders!
All in all, this turned out pretty decent looking for a quilt made completely from fabrics I wasn't really crazy about to start with! So now I'm sold on the HeartStrings ideas, and my next one I may actually even follow the rules and use some fabrics that I like. LOL!
Happy Quilting!
Jean MaDan
