All About Strings Blog Hop

Hello everyone!  Welcome to my stop on the All About Strings Blog Hop.  For those who have never been here before, my name is Janice and I reside in southern Idaho in a tiny little farming community. I've been quilting for 3 years now and this is the largest quilt I've ever made!    

Today's hop was a PERFECT motivation to get this quilt finished that I started last year.

I had to take this picture before the binding was on before I ran out of daylight!

This quilt is from a pattern found in the book No Scrap Left Behind by Amanda Jean Nyborg.  She called her version June and said she uses it as a picnic quilt for her family.

Where Amanda used colorful strings to create her slabs, I decided to use only fabrics with black backgrounds.  In the process of making the string slabs, I discovered I didn't have nearly enough black fabrics to make the whole quilt and put out a call for help in gathering some more black scraps.  What a wonderful response  I got!

Here are some of the fun fabrics that came in . . .

I did not use any stabilizer or foundation when making these string slabs.  Just sewed strings together until it was approximately the size I wanted and then trimmed to the proper size.

The color scheme was inspired by this picture . . .

UPDATE:  I've had several people ask me who the artist was and Vireya kindly let me know this painting and others like it can be found here!  Thanks Vireya!

And this is where it's going to live!

The quilting was done by Angie at Sleepy Hollow Quilt Shop with a fun variegated thread.  I normally quilt my own quilts but this one was the biggest one I've ever made at 85" x 85" and it was too much fabric to try and wrestle with on my sewing machine. 

Here is a shot of the crazy backing!

And that is the story of my first finish in 2019!  

And the first quilt I've made that I haven't givven away.  This one stays home!

Thank you to Carla at Creatin' in the Sticks for organizing this hop.  Having a deadline is  a great motivator for me and I love seeing all the variety of ways to make string quilts!

Here is a list of today's participants for lots of great ideas for string quilts:

Thursday, March 28th

Cynthia's Creating Ark
The Joyful Quilter
Color Creating and Quilting (you are here)
PamelaQuilts
Beaquilter
Two Maker Chicks
Days Filled With Joy
Quilting & Learning - What a Combo!

Creatin' in the Sticks

Linking to:

Let's Bee Social
Mid Week Makers
Needle & Thread Thursday
Alycia Quilts

I Need a Few Testers

Not pattern testers, blog testers.  I've been told that leaving a comment on my blog is a complicated process and a pain in the neck!   I didn't know anything had changed.  Could a few of you leave a test comment on this post and let me know what you have to do?  Then I'll better know what I am dealing with.

Thank you!

UPDATE!! 

OK, I think it's fixed now and it turns out that the reason a few of you have to click on captcha pictures has to do with your privacy settings.  Rebecca at Cheeky Cognoscenti explained it this way:

"No icky Captcha pictures to click on -- yay!! I was having that problem when trying to comment on other blogs, not just yours, and for me at least the problem was on MY end, nothing that you were doing. I'd gotten a new Mac computer and the default privacy settings for Safari were blocking cross-site tracking. That prevented your blog from being able to "see" that I was logged into my Google/Blogger account as me to verify my identity. Once I clicked the checkbox to allow cross-site tracking, I just see that little thumbnail picture of my face next to "Comment as: Rebecca Grace" under the text box. I click on Publish and now it goes right through instead of endless rounds of attempting to prove that I'm a human."

Thanks Rebecca!

Fun With Owyhee Mountain Quilters!

I love show and tell so I'll get right to it!!  Last night was the fourth official get-together of Owyhee Mountain Quilters.  Debbie brought the most fascinating quilt made with Hawaii themed prints.  I couldn't get the whole quilt in the picture but following is as much as I could get and some fun closeups!

I want you to notice the small details.  The sashing between is ocean waves going across and up and down is sandy beaches with cute little footprints in them.   (see below)

Debbie also brought a finished flimsy with bright springy colors.  So springy and bright!  Robin said it reminded her of Easter!  Super cute. 

Robin brought the cutest knitting needle case.  The details are so fun.  First, the sheep fabric she used, second the cute little ruler ribbon that Moda uses to wrap their bundles, inside Robin cut up pieces of the same ribbon to mark pockets for the different size needles she uses.

I'm not sure what happened to my picture of the inside, 

but here is a closeup of the cute needle pockets! "Purl On!"

Robin also brought a quilt top made by her great grandmother!  She wants to finish it but is still in the "looking for the perfect idea" stage.  We'd love to to hear what you would do if this was yours!  What kind of fabric would you choose to finish this Lone Star quilt?

The project Robin brought to work on is called Hibiscus which is a flower commonly found in Hawaii.  We accidentally have a theme going on!

Here are the blocks she's finished so far.

She's trying to decide whether to go ahead and make the twin size or stop at the lap size.

My project?  For my block of the month project, I sewed together 8 of these . . .

And the rest of my time was spent on a new project!  I am excited to share what happened to me two Saturday's ago!  I accidentally found out about an auction near my house that had 50 totes of fabric.  FIFTY!!  I was thrilled to discover there was a lot of Civil War reproduction fabric in there since I have recently developed an attraction to that style.  I purchased 4 totes full and after taking inventory of just one of the totes, there was over 100 yards of fabric in just one tote!  SCORE!!  Then on top of that, my friend Jessie was with me and after everybody had bought the totes they had their eyes on, they sold all the remaining totes for so much per tote winner takes all.  Jessie won the bid and asked me if I wanted to go halves.  I must be crazy but I agreed to do it.   She won the bid at $7.50 per tote for 30 more totes!  Yes, my husband DOES think I'm crazy.

Of course, there was a lot of fabric in there that wasn't what I would have picked or wasn't even quilting fabric and that is going to be donated to someone who will use it.  I will be sharing things about this score of all scores in future posts, but today I will show you just one thing.   Inside one of the totes, I found a bunch of 3" squares sewn into 4-block strips like this:

They were all pinned together in groups of 4 so I assumed the original maker meant to make 16 patches.  So I sewed them all together.  LOVING the old-fashioned vibe of this quilt and the variety of fabrics she used.  Very few repeats.

Now that I virtually have a whole second stash of fabric, I looked around in there for something that would work for sashing and found the perfect thing!  It's a tan background with some squiggly green and red stripes that really goes well with all the muted colors in these blocks.

Not only did I find the perfect sashing but also the perfect back!  Check this out! 

I can't wait to show you this finish! Still need to decide on binding but I'll wait until I get the top sewn together to do that.   I am HAVING SO MUCH FUN playing with and organizing fabric.  😍

Don't forget to share your wonderful ideas for how you would finish Robin's Lone Star!   

Also, if you would like to follow our activities on our Owyhee Mountain Quilters Facebook page, just message me and I'll send you an invitation.  We post other things there that won't be on my blog.  

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!  

Linking to:

Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop!

From Bolt to Beauty

Friday Foto Fun

Sew Can She