It's my day for the All About Strings blog hop, hosted by Carla of Creatin' in the Sticks! When she published that this hop was happening, I jumped on it because I really needed to get through some of my scraps.
When I get to the place that my fabric is not enough to put back on the shelf, I cut those scraps into strips and/or squares of various sizes; squares from 5" down to 2", strips from 2 1/2" down to 1 1/2" and then the strings are saved as well. (I won't tell you about the basket of scraps waiting to be cut...) I have shoe-box size crates these all go in, and let me tell you, I am getting quite a stack of them. When I read that Pat Sloan only allows 2 crates to fill up before she does something with them, I thought I'd better get cracking!
Our quilt club, the Cerro Gordo Quilters, has an annual retreat at Threads of Time in Danville, IL, and I had decided early on that I was going to only take my scraps--my strings and my 5" blocks--to make something, anything, with them. Carla's hop helped me focus more on strings, but the 5" blocks were handy too.
At first I thought I'd just make a bunch of squares using strings for a table runner, but then I thought some quarter square triangle blocks made from 5" squares would look nice too, so I made enough to alternate them on a table runner. My string blocks were large enough to accommodate the size of the 4 quarter square triangles in a block, and I forget what size that was now--maybe 7 1/2"??
Then I decided I would piece the back with strings too. Man, does that take a long time!
Here is a peek from one side.
More of a peek...
And the whole thing:
I quilted it using my walking foot and those "organic waves"--easy peasy.
The binding is leftover 2 1/2" strings that I pieced together. I love it--either side could be used for the runner.
Then I thought it would be fun to make a star block with a string-pieced center. I had brought some extra background fabric since I wasn't sure I had enough light colored 5" pieces, and I did have to use some of it. I didn't use a pattern, just figured out what I needed to do. The center is an 8 1/2" square, and the outer squares are 4 1/2".
I made 4 at retreat and have more half square triangles ready to go, but I don't know if I want a quilt or what out of these, so I have stopped for now.
The other day, I decided it would be fun to make a zipper bag out of my strings, so I opened up a box again (I have 3 boxes of strings), and pulled out stuff until I put together these 2 pieces:
Then I used mostly bigger scraps (ones in that basket to be cut) for the lining pieces:
Here is my bag, front and back:
and inside (It's about 14 x 17," a nice size for caring sewing stuff). Again, no pattern, just putting together until I had a size I liked.
Sew, there are my projects. I still have more strings than I know what to do with, and a ton more 5" squares, not to mention the smaller stuff. I think it grew while I was working with it--I didn't make a dent. So, I believe there will be more stringy/scrappy projects in my future!
Thanks, Carla, for hosting this amazing hop!
Here are today's other hoppers with their wonderful projects:
Tuesday,
March 26th
Just Sew Quilter (You are here!)
