String Star Finish

It's a finish!

String Star

40 x 40

I started this in December 2025. Someone gave me the 12 gray floral half triangles. I decided to use them as half a string block and pulled strings from my string bin that were the colors in the gray florals.  I used a newspaper foundation.  I decided on a String Star layout. I made four all string blocks for the star center. Top was completed in January. 

I quilted it on my sewing machine with swirls of gray.

The back and binding. 

And now it is ready to give a child a hug. 

And sew on...

Monday Musings at Brenda's Songbird Designs

***

The weather has been so weird this year and I'm behind in gardening tasks. I haven't even cleaned up my asparagus patch yet and noticed I had asparagus to harvest. In fact, some was already overgrown. I had aspragus for dinner the other night and again last night. 

I like it sprinkled with olive oil and kosher salt and then roasted in a 425 degree oven for 10 minutes. Tonight with the leftovers I think I will make an asparagus fritatta.  Since hubby gets his food, a formula via G-tube, and since I don't like asparagus frozen or canned it looks like I will be giving away asparagus soon. I'm sure there is more out there for harvest today. 

***

I finished a book! It is the first book in William Kent Kruger's Cork O'Connor Mystery series - Iron Lake. I started on the second book of the series. I think there are 20+ books in the series so I will continue to read whatever is available with the Kindle Unlimited subscription.  I enjoy WWII historical fiction but need to read something a little lighter for a while.  

String Star Finish

It's a finish!

String Stars

48.5 x 65

I started making the Stars in 2024 to use up shorter strings.  I finished the top in February 2025.

I used Corey Yoder's templates for the Stars. 

I big stitch hand quilted it with navy perle cotton thread #8. 

The back.

And sew on...

Finished Or Not Finished Friday at Alycia Quilts

***

I forgot to mention that on Saturday I received some FQ winnings from the Stashbuster's UFO Challenge fourth quarter 2025 random drawing.  If you have a lot of UFOs like I do the UFO Challenge is a good way to get them finished and/or move them forward. Two FQs and $1 is the entry fee. Name gets put on a list. As people complete UFOs name goes to the bottom of the list and name goes into quarterly drawing pot. It is never too late to enter if you care to join us. 

***

I know it's going to be a crappy day today...colon prep day! Colonoscopy tomorrow!

 

String Star

 

It's a top!

String Star

40 x 40

Someone gave me 12 of those gray floral triangles of fabric. Last month I decided to use them as a background to a String Star. I used some strings from the string bin that were in some of the colors in the floral.  Then when I went to assemble the blocks two of them went missing..  What was lost has now been found and assembly is complete. 

The four center blocks are all strings with a different gray floral used as the center string. 

And sew on...

***

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die..."

My sister-in-law Suzy passed away December 26, 2025.
My grand nephew George was born January 5, 2026

New String Projects

 

My boxes of strings are overflowing so time to do something with them. When I fig into strings I make blocks for a couple of different quilts - at least one that uses long strings and at least one that uses shorter strings. 

With long strings I am making 12 inch Wonky Log Cabin blocks with red centers and half of the block light. I think I might make a bigger quilt with 30 or 35 nlocks. 

I am making String X blocks with shorter strings. Someone gave me those 5 inch squares I will use for the block corners. There were just the right amount of squares so it was meant to be.

Someone gave me twelve 10.5 inch half triangles of a gray floral. I used them as half of a string block and the gray will be a String Star background. I went to assemble the little String Star top and am missing two blocks, darn it. I have been processing a lot of scraps, organizing orphan blocks, parts and partially finished projects from others as well as piecing backings so who knows where my missing blocks are. 

And sew on...

Stringing Stars Top

 

Stringing Stars

68 x 68

It's a flimsy!

Free pattern from Quilts & Quilts The Fabric Shoppe

The other day when I blogged about cleaning up after a September quilting marathon I mentioned that Stringing Stars was one of the quilts I planned to make from my strings.  I was actually going to wait until 2022 to work with my strings and crumbs. After I looked at my giant box of colored strings I decided I should work on them as soon as possible or I might end up strangled with strings. 

I have a couple of other string quilts in mind but started with this one because it uses some of the longer strings and a few others use shorter strings.  So from my giant box of strings I pulled out all of the darks. I only included a few black strings because I wanted to save those to mix in with the brights later on.  After I had the dark strings sorted then I pulled out all of the novelties from the darks to use in a different quilt for kids later on. 

I still get a little hometown newspaper delivered because I use it in gardening  and use it when I need larger paper foundations for quilting. I cut 9 inch newspaper squares for foundations. I don't mind pulling the papers off the back. I throw those newspaper pieces in the compost pile when I've finished tearing them off. 

Next time I make half dark/half light string blocks I need to remember to line them up a little better on the diagonal when I sew them. I guess that's where  little glue might come in handy. 

I really had to scrape the barrel to find enough neutral strings. 

I do have some other light colored strings I was tempted to use but decided to try to keep to mostly white and cream. 

Oh, and I had a bunch of long strings of that dark star fabric that came from trimming a large quilt back. I had enough strings of it in various widths to use in each of the star points so I guess that was meant to be. 

I'll be starting on a couple more string quilts soon. Before I do I will blog about that giant box of strings and plans for it. 

Finished or Not Finished Friday at Alycia Quilts

Peacock Party at Wendy's Quilts and More

WIPs to UFOs to WIPs Again

 I have several boxes and bins of UFOs. They are UFOs for a variety of reasons.  Periodically I dig through to see if there's anything I feel like actually finishing.  I feel like finishing Wagon Wheels so made four this week and moved them out of the UFO box and into their own project box.  That makes 16 blocks total now out of 63 required. 

I started these nine inch Wagon Wheel blocks in July 2013 and worked on them a little in 2015.  The pattern is from a McCall's DVD I think I've misplaced now so good thing the instructions and templates were with the blocks.  I found these difficult to make when I started them. But since then I've made a lot of quilts with curves so they seem pretty easy to make now as long as I remember to cut the pieces correctly. 

Actually this is a smaller block version of an Anna Maria Horner pattern called Spinning Stars that I made in 2015 and called Petunias and the quilt I have in flimsy stage called Salsa Dancing. 

Now that it is in it's own project box and out where I can see it I hope to make a few blocks each week out of 30s reproduction fabrics and solids although I don't have many solids to choose from. 

 And speaking of 30s reproductions...this is another UFO that recently got it's own project box - little five inch string blocks.  It looks like I started these in 2014 to use my 1.5 inch 30s reproduction scraps.  The reason this became a UFO is because I ran low on scraps and didn't want to cut any fabric specifically for these String Stars.  The stars are Kona Spring and I had a piece of it folded around the blocks I had made. The Kona Spring reminds me of the green Grandma used in her quilts in the 30s so that's why I picked that color.  I used a tutorial at the Molly Flanders blog. 

 Over the years I've been accumulating 1.5 inch 30s scraps for this project. 

I've been working on about ten blocks a day. I have all the foundation squares cut and I'll be darned if that piece of Kona was exactly enough fabric to give me the size quilt I want. Weird since I didn't really know what size quilt I was making until I recently dug out this UFO. 

 Now this UFO turned WIP has a project box all to itself too. 

After I'm finished with those 1.5 inch 30s scraps they will go into the project box with the general population of 1.5 inch scraps I've been accumulating to move forward on my Spider Web quilt using the tutorial at Quiltville.  I previously used the Quiltville tutorial to make a Spider Web quilt in 2012. That one used different sized strings. 

How Some Projects Get Started Around Here

I started cutting some triangles for a String Star because...

...I still had some string pieces left over from making...

...my Feather quilt top which was made out of leftover strings cut from the side of quilt backs over the years.

I still have lots of strings and have always wanted to make a String Star quilt.  I've been inspired by a couple of beauties out there in blog land. Now is the time. So I sewed a whole bunch of strings together this weekend and cut 41 triangles so far.   I think the pattern I'm using said I needed 248 of them.  I'll be cutting more triangles this weekend.  I think I will have enough string scraps and won't have to cut into any fabric for the star triangles.  I'm pretty sure I have enough indigo fabric for the background.  

Linking to:

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Monday Making at Love  Laugh  Quilt

Moving It Forward Monday at Em's Scrapbag