Hi it’s Jenny from the MSQC. Today I want to talk to you a little bit today about foundation
piecing and making string quilts. Now string quilts have been made ever since there was
scraps. We have had scraps forever and it’s a great way to make a quilt block to use all
those little tiny scraps and little tiny pieces. And what I have behind me is a little string
quilt that I made with a honeybun which are inch and a half strips. It’s a Bungle in
the Jungle honeybun. And it’s just, you know, we just lined them up. But we’ve made
this easy for you.
So what we’ve done is we have ten inch foundation papers for you to sew your strips on. And
I have, I do a lot of binding here at Missouri Star. When people send their quilts in oftentimes
they will want me to bind them. And I’ll have a little piece left and I throw it in
a, a bin. And so I have loads of these 2 ½ inch strips. So I started making some squares
with the 2 ½ inch strips. Now these are, this is great fun because you can do so much
with these. These papers come in a package of 250. That is a lot of quilt blocks. And,
and I just want to show you how I do it. You can, because it’s a foundation you can do
anything with it. You could put a piece in the middle and put pieces all over it. But
what I’m going to show you today is an easy way to string piece.
So one of the things I use for this is the lapel stick. And it’s a great little glue
stick but it doesn’t clog up your needle. And it won’t, it dries soft. And it just
washes right out. And I’m going to run a bead of this glue from corner to corner right
here. And then I’m going to take a white piece and put it right down the middle. Now
you could put any color of strip you wanted down the middle. But if you always put a white
one down the middle then when you start lining these up you’re going to get a secondary
pattern in there with this line. Also generally string quilts are made using all different
sizes of pieces. But I have a lot of 2 ½ inch strips so that’s what I’m going to
use today. But please use your imagination and use whatever you’d like.
So what we’re going to do is I’m going to gather up some of these pieces out of my
bag. I always try to color coordinate them and put them in bags or bins. And I’m just
going to lay it face down on here. And I’m going to sew it to this first white strip
right here just a quarter of an inch like we do. And we’re going to iron that back.
First we’re going to come over here and just do our quarter of an inch all the way
across. You’re going to sew right through the paper. And you stay right along there.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re straight or not. None of that matters. And the paper
on the back is going to become your pattern when we’re done because you’ll have all
these different sizes of strips laying all over the place. So then I’m going to bring
this over here and I’m just going to iron this back. Lay it right back like this. You
want to make sure that you pull it all the way over so that you don’t have any folds.
And then we’re just going to add another strip on there. Now if you want to you can,
if you want to you can clip the extra off but I kind of wait until I’m finished. This
is a little piece of a binding strip. I’m going to see if I can just take that off there.
But I don’t have to. That’s one of the really nice relaxing things about this. So
then again you can see. I just lay that strip right along there. And we sew it on. I don’t
sew the strips all the way out to the edges. I just sew them where the paper is because
that’s going to be my block. Alright, let’s add another. Iron open. And then we’re going
to add another one in there. This little one looks like it will be perfect and I’m going
to have to iron this open. There we go. Set it on there. They go together so fast. And
it’s just a great way to use up scraps. Normally, also they don’t like put their
quilts together in colorways like this. But I have my green bag right here. But normally
they don’t really go together like that. They just go together, you know, hodge podge,
however you want to put them together. Now I can see right here on the very end of mine,
you can see right here I have a tiny little piece of paper and that needs to be covered.
So we’re going to put a little piece on there, right here. Just sew down there real
quick. And then we’re going to do the exact same thing to the other side.
Ok so now I’ve got all these strips sewn on, crazy pieces. But all we do is turn it
over and then we’re going to slice these off. So we’re going to use the paper as
our cutting pattern. So I’m going to lay my ruler right along the edge of the paper.
And I’m just going to slice along here. That will take these off. And remember you’re
going to want to save all these pieces because they’ll work for little bits and pieces
of the next one you do. Somehow I think your strips kind of multiply. Your scraps kind
of multiply when you’re doing this kind of thing. It’s like no matter how much you
think you’re getting rid of, there’s always more. So I’ve got this almost almost trimmed.
One more side. Cleaning up very nicely. Alright, there we go.
Ok so this is what we have. This nice little block right here that we made with scraps.
Now on the back is paper. The paper comes off very easily. You can just crease it and
it just comes right off. This is a great job for grandchildren or you know, you. If you
want, whenever you want. You can give it kind of a pull, and it will also release. It will,
just comes off really easy. So what I want you to do with this is I want you to use your
imagination and think about different ways you can use this. Because this is, this is
really fun. When you set these together. You can set them, and I’m just going to lay
some out here so you can see them so that you have an X, an X block and an O block going
together. See this will make the big. Let me clear some of this off so we can put some
more stuff in here. See how it’s going to make this big triangular one this way. The
other thing I want you to remember is that these are the same size as layer cakes which
is why we chose the ten inch square so that you can pair them with the layer cake. Also
remember that if you were to cut this in half it’s going to be a half square triangle.
So you know you’ve just got to let your mind go. There’s all kinds of things you
can do with this. And it will help you use up some of those scraps. Or you could put
one together that’s perfectly ordered with a jelly roll or a honeybun like I did with
this one. Anyway we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on String Quilting from the MSQC.