Stringing Along

I'm a member of the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild.  In April we had a new mother in our guild.  Usually someone comes up with a plan and the guild works together to make a quilt for the new baby.  We decided that a string quilt would be a great quilt for a new baby.  Each block was supposed to finish at 8" by 8" and be sewn onto a muslin backing.

I broke out my bins full of scraps and strings and got to work.  I have entirely too man bits of fabric.  Great for projects like this, though.

It didn't take long for me to end up with a couple finished blocks.  All the blocks were handed over to our assembler at the March meeting.

She brought me the assembled top for quilting.  The first step was to trim batting and put together a backing.

We had a few blocks left over so we pieced in some of these blocks to make the backing wide enough.

I set the embroidery machine up to stitch out the baby's name.  I quilted it with this great flower motif I learned from Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters.  This is a motif I really enjoy quilting with.  I think it is a great all-over design.  I need to take more close-up photos of the things I quilt.

Trimmed and ready to go back to the assembler who also volunteered to attach the binding.

For the record, sewing these onto muslin is not a great idea if you plan to use pieced blocks on the front and the backing.  Too many seams can pile up making quilting difficult or even impossible.  I usually sew my string blocks onto a paper foundation that gets torn away after trimming the block to size.

The finished quilt was presented to the new mommy at the April meeting.  I think it was a great project that allowed everyone to participate and created a great finish.

If you're looking for a good tutorial on string blocks I highly recommend Bonnie Hunter's blog Quiltville.  Her blog is full of free patterns, tutorials, photos of her quilts, stories about her travels, and you can buy her books directly from her.

Has your guild done any fun group projects recently?