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.
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.
I love the windowpane/stained glass look.
Fantastic
Thank you so much
This is such a great design! I love the vertical zigzag pattern made by the complementary colored strings in that setting. Nicely done!
Nicely done! Love that picture with the bear =)
WoW! I love this quilt. The secondary design of the zigzag is a wonderful surprise. The shot with Teddy is too cute!