Of Squares and Strings

   String blocks continue.  I ran out of cut telephone pages and thought to go look for my basket of very thin, very light weight shirting fabrics.  Found it.....pushed to the back of the bottom cabinet behind the scrap bin of batting parts.  I am no longer good at standing on my head to search for things.....not that I ever was, but even worse now...lol.  I was given yards and yards of off cuts from men's shirting fabric several years ago.  It is perfect for string foundations.  

   I had questions about all the paper on the first sets of string blocks.  The telephone book pages come away easily....with a tiny stitch  it almost slips off.   The down side to using paper, besides having to tear it off, is the possibility of stretching on the edges.  A row of stay stitching around the  4 edges will prevent that.









   Here are two blocks with different width strips in the center diagonal.  The narrow one looks the nicest to me.  The narrow strip is probably 1'' to 1 1/4'' wide.  The wider strip is probably 1 1/2'' to almost 2''.   I don't really like them mixed together, so I will be careful how I place the narrow strip blocks /wider strip blocks together.   They should go into different projects probably.



   The last thing on my to-do list for the month involved squares...batik squares of
 2 1/2''.  I purchased a set of batik squares earlier last year from Wanda at  Exuberant Color, and I have been wanting  to create something with them.
  I started on the design wall and began placing them by color family.....very much as I did before in Wonder of Color. 


    Needless to say, I was not happy with the repeat.  So thought maybe shaded block units would be a better thing to experiment with.  Then I thought why not change the size of the units to a rectangular size.  So I decided to play with that option.    I cut interfacing to size for 5 rows and 3 columns.  Here's the first colorwash group of greens from my stash pieces.   Now to fuse and stitch.








   Then again  after sewing and pressing.   I'm not sure yet how I will set this together, but for right now I will enjoy just playing with a few color families to see how I like them.  These units could always turn into a table runner or narrow banner.
   I think I will play with purple next....that is this month's color :)   And it is about building up parts to complete a whole top/quilt.  Not every quilt begins as a full plan for me, and so I choose to enjoy the adventure that is created by experimenting and playing.  

  Happy stitching.