Rachel over at Stitched in Color is currently hosting the Festival of Strings and, although I had been following the build-up to the festival over the past month, I hadn’t intended to take part myself as until today I didn’t have a string quilt made, or in the making.However, all that has now changed. Last night as I was tidying up the scraps and leftovers from my Bug Picnic quilt I came across a little stack of strips leftover from my block cutting. Most were no longer than 7″ and approximately 2″ wide, and I almost put them in my scrap bag. Then I remembered the brilliant tutorial by Molli Sparkles on string piecing without a foundation that I’d read a couple of weeks ago. In no time at all I was rethreading my machine and following the tutorial I soon converted my strips, along with a few extras I quickly cut from my leftovers, into a couple of pieces of fabric I could work with.

Then it was all pretty much design-on-the-go time. Squares were cut; half square triangles sewn; a quick layout pieced together and finally, with the addition of some strips of navy solid, my mini quilt top was finished.The back quickly followed suit after a quick browse through my fabric stash. As the majority of the patterns fabrics I had originally used in the bug Picnic quilt were from the Rainforest Buzz line by Chrei Strole for Northcott Fabrics I opted to stick with that line and picked the stripe fabric for the back (doesn’t it look like strings?) and leaves on blue for the binding.

For the quilting I worked a couple of lines 1/4″ from the seams on each of the navy strips, and then for each square I randomly added lines following the angles within the square.

I have decided to call this mini quilt “Through Leaded Panes” as the sashing and border remind me of leaded windows. I love the bright colours in this quilt so much and had thought that it would make a lovely wall hanging in my boy’s room, or elsewhere in our house, but now I’m not so sure that this mini quilt will ever make it onto a wall.

If you’ve not already visited then pop on over to the Festival of Strings. There are plenty of magnificent quilts to be discovered.

10 thoughts on “Strung Together

  1. Your design is wonderful, I enjoyed reading about it. I also love your blog header, is that a particular pattern? I just love the way the flowers are done with the lite gray centers.

  2. This is such a great design! I love the vertical zigzag pattern made by the complementary colored strings in that setting. Nicely done!

  3. WoW! I love this quilt. The secondary design of the zigzag is a wonderful surprise. The shot with Teddy is too cute!

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