Whew....just in the nick of time, I finished it up. What started out as these simple 8.5" x 8.5" string blocks made entirely out of Heather Bailey fabrics, seen in the photo to the left. Twenty-two of these blocks were made by my Always Bee Learning Bee mates in the first round of this group, eight were made by yours truly. Were then transformed into the roughly 13" x 13" blocks below, still featuring Heather Bailey fabrics, but with Kona White added in there too for a bit of contrast. It was a lot of sewing and constructing of blocks, 30 in total. I didn't think I would meet my deadline, but in the end these blocks were constructed into a throw quilt, and now she is together and transformed into a pretty cheerful quilt, if I do say so myself! I love how she turned out. So bright, happy, random and yet structured, such a nice combination of things. It looks as good in person as it did in my head, and I just love when that happens.
This throw quilt measures 62" x 75" and is a great size, not too big, not too small. I did something a bit odd with this quilt, and constructed it a tad bit differently than I normally would. I sewed the finished blocks together with 3/8" seam allowance. I did this for several reasons. The main reason is that when you construct string blocks on paper as a foundation, like these were, when you tear off the paper, the edges of these blocks tend to get un-sewn a bit in spots. Some of these blocks had strings that didn't quite go all the way to the edge once they were trimmed either. Thus the 3/8" seam allowance fixed all these issues. Any raw edges were totally sewn in and encased, and any unraveling ends aren't really an issue anymore. This also explains why I left these blocks roughly 13" x 13", I was sorta (without any math involved) allowing for the extra seam allowance, which worked out great.
My feeble attempt to hold this quilt up for the photo shoot. You can see I was standing on a step ladder, I'm not quite tall enough!
This was the type of quilt that as I was making the blocks I started dreading the process of sewing the blocks together in the end. All these strings, so many seam allowances and the fear of the bulkiness involved. Honestly, it wasn't bad, at all, in fact it went together so smoothly I was really surprised. I stitched all these blocks together, yesterday, in about 2 hours, maybe not even that long. I think that since the strings aren't supposed to match up, that the majority of the seams don't line up, thus the bulk I was so worried about, never really happened but in one or two places on the quilt. That was a nice surprise that I did not expect.
I have the backing fabric, so I just need to get it ready, baste and quilt this one. I am looking forward to quilting it, but am still unsure as to how I will quilt it. I think I will sketch things out, but I do know that I want to free motion quilt it, and hopefully I will be able to use my recently cleaned up and restored vintage Singer 15-91that I have set up and dedicated to free motion quilting. I have been dying to use this machine on a larger quilt, so I plan to quilt this one sooner than later! So exciting for us quilt nerds! HA!
This quilt top is my entry into the Festival of Strings over at Stitched in Color. Make sure to stop by and see all the other beautiful entries.
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