Monday, March 18, 2013

String Piecing

I have a bunch of strips and scraps left over. The natural fit is....string pieced blocks!  Looks like baby will get a quilt, also.  Or, at least, that's my good intention.


Simple diagonal foundation pieced blocks, nine inches square. I want the finished block to be 8 inches square, so I have a little wiggle room to square the blocks up.

I'm throwing in some strips of solids from the fat quarter pack I purchased at JoAnn.


The foundation is a 9-inch square of muslin. I had found the muslin at JoAnn in the remnant bin, and purchased it because I figured I needed at least one piece of scrap fabric for testing out the machine and the stitches.  I found a good use for it!

I don't have rotary cutting supplies here at my parents' house and I really don't want to buy a whole set. (It's bad enough I bought a machine just for the 6 weeks I'm here!) The foundation squares were cut with a cardboard template. I used Dad's right angle from his carpentry supplies and drew the shape on the the top of a shirt box. Then I cut it out. To make the muslin squares, I traced each square on the fabric with a pencil and cut it out by hand. The remnant was super wide, and I could draw 16 squares on it.

I'm not sure how many blocks I'll get from the scraps. The number will determine the setting for the quilt top. If I get all 16, I'm thinking a 7x4 block straight setting with 4 rows of blocks alternating with 3 rows of white.

These blocks are crazy fun to make! And, they don't have to be precise, another bonus!

1 comment:

  1. These are really beautiful. I love the colors. I've never tried string piecing but I would love to. Do you always have to use a muslin foundation?

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