Stringing right along...

I'm enjoying the slightly less demanding (although no less busy) time that early winter brings. i have several quilting projects going, and i want to share my most recent project with you.

this is a strip quilt, and great for using up all those scraps from your stash! but of course, if you'd like to go out and buy more fabric, don't let me stop you...

for this quilt, you'll need several different kinds of fabrics:

* the foundation (PREWASHED muslin or equivalent)

* the strips (1/3 yard of 6-9 coordinating fabrics)

* the background triangles (neutral is best)

* the center strip (your darkest or most dominant fabric)

start by prewashing your muslin and cutting into squares. i cut my prewashed muslin squares 14". next, cut the center strip. (i cut mine 3 ½" wide) finally, cut all the remaining strip fabrics into a variety of widths. ( 1 @ 1¼", 2 @ 1 ½", 2 @ 2" and 1 @ 2½" is a nice assortment of wide and narrow widths)

lay out your center strip onto the (did i mention prewashed?) muslin square. i ironed the black strip on, just to give it that extra "stick".

choose one of your fabrics, and sew it onto one side of the center strip, using a ¼" seam. you'll only need to extend it over the muslin foundation a tiny bit. this block will be trimmed at the end.

also, if you could see it in your heart to ignore my very ugly ironing board cover, I'd really appreciate it. thankyouverymuch.

set your seam, and press the first strip to one side. (towards the corner of the square)

choose another color, and sew this strip to both sides of the center strip. starting your strips out "lopsided" gives you an extra boost on the scrappy look that many like. if you did both sides the same, the blocks would all be a matched pair.

set your seam, and press the strips to one side.

continue in this manner (sew, trim, set and press) until all of the muslin base is covered with strips. you can see from this square that even though i used the same sewing sequence in sewing on the strips, the lonely first strip makes the two sides look very different.

this is what the muslin base looks like from the back.

i squared up my block to 13", making sure to center the cutting with the black center strip.

next, cut out your neutral background fabric the same size as your trimmed, strip squares.

now you'll need to mark a line from corner to corner on the background square. i use a crayola marker; gray in this case. pin the background square onto the strip square, making sure that the diagonal line is going the same way as your center (black) strip.




sew ¼" to the right and left of this line. i should have mentioned before that a walking foot is very helpful in this project. I'll stop just short of saying that it's a necessity.


using scissors, or a rotary cutter and ruler if you'd prefer, cut along the line that you drew. now you'll have two half-square triangle units.



set your seam, and press open. iron the seam allowance towards the background fabric, to help reduce bulk.

you can see that for each square that you piece, you'll get 2 blocks. i plan on making my quilt 4 blocks wide and 5 blocks long, so i only needed to piece 10 strip foundations. (with 6" borders this quilt should finish approximately 60" x 72") i was pleased with how quickly these squares went together- easily done in an evening of relaxing sewing!

let me know if you decide to piece a string quilt. I'll link up to you in this post~ we'd all like to see what you made!

and as soon as my quilt is done, I'll post a picture up here, too. as soon as I'm done blogging about it, that is!