String Symphonies

 I sometimes feel like the old lady who lived in a shoe but instead of too many children I have too many scraps and don't know what to do.  Last year I tackled my crumb boxes and now I have several crumb quilt tops in the queue for quilting.  In 2019 I want to tackle the selvages and strings. You've seen a couple of selvage quilt tops I've completed the last couple of days so I have a head start on those.  I've sorted and sorted the string piles and now I think I know what to do. 

Earlier this year I made a wonky quarter log cabin quilt top from the brown, green and a few yellow strings.  And I still had strings in that box.   So now  I have decided I will make wonky log cabin blocks with log cabins in the center -- Cabins in the Woods.  I made these blocks nine inches because that's one of the sizes of square rulers I have which makes them easy to trim. 

 A log of the strings left in the box are trimmings from the sides of quilt backs and some are long and wide. Before I proceed on the Cabins in the Woods I'm going to iron these and trim off 2.5 inch pieces for the binding box.  I may have enough to use as a scrappy binding on both the Cabin in the Woods and Camouflage Quarter Logs. 

 I also have some strings that are ends of fabrics or leftovers from other projects. The ones that are getting too short for use in the Cabins in the Woods will go into a general box of smaller pieces for a Coin or String X  or X  Marks the Block type quilt later on next year. 

 And then there's the low volume/light blues box. I'm making ten inch blocks and using paper foundations. They will have a consistent two inch center like you see here. 

Singing the Blues? 

 I chose that fabric as the center because I have two yards of it and I think it's pretty ugly. My husband loves it. He suggested I buy some a few years ago when we were out and about because it reminded him of his grandmother.  Well, I guess it does remind me of an old lady. 

 Then there's the bright strings. 

I found ten of these ten inch Crossed Quilt blocks buried in a bin with some other old UFOs.  I think I made them a long time ago with the strings I had on hand then.  I see the tutorial still exists  at The Long Thread and her blog post was from 2011 so maybe 2011 is the year I started them.  I'm hoping I will have a quilt top in 2019. 

 Also from the bright strings comes Cattywampus II -- wonky log cabins with 6.5 inch black background cat centers.  Cattwampus I consisted of 15 inch blocks but I'm only making these 12 inches - again because that's the size of a square ruler I have making it easy to trim these wonkies. 

 Here's some other old string blocks I started and never finished.  I have three of them. I'm making these ten inch blocks with a black polka dot stripe strip inserted somewhere in each block.  

 I have two boxes of bright strings so should be able to get more than the three quilts mentioned from the pile. Like the brown and green strings there's some long wide backing trimmings in there and I'm going to iron and trim to 2.5 inch for the binding box. What's left will go back into the bright string box. 

Earlier I showed you the low volume (with volume turned up once in awhile) hearts I started from a low volume and pink box.  Earlier this year I made two different quilt tops using strings from this box-   Rocky Road to Kansas and pink strings with polka dot centers (the Pink Polka?). 

So that's the plan so far for strings in 2019. 

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework.