String Blocks

Each day of vacation I worked a couple of hours on string blocks for an upcoming class. The blocks aren't sewn together yet. They will be combined with other blocks and some of them will be further manipulated, but this is the fruit of my labor.

These blocks are 8 1/2" square...

These are 4" square...

My favorite yarn shop in Northampton, Mass. carries all kinds of yarn (including weaver's yarn on cones), books, tools, and accessories plus wool roving, which is what I bought there. The store is called Webs. For perspective, one of these balls is nearly the size of a basketball.

The center fabric in each of these four blocks is a lovely print that I found at Valley Fabrics in Northampton. I'm hoping that our quilt shop here in the Athens area has more of the same fabric because I only bought a few fat quarters of it.

The best laid plans...

The best laid plans...sometimes change. I had planned to combine the string piece blocks with the 9-patch blocks, but they looked like a floral explosion together. Instead, the 9-patch blocks work quite well with the hand-dyed fabric, and I have 12, 3" string blocks which are the start of another small quilt. Not a bad compromise.

I would never have put these colors together myself (black, blush peach, fuchsia, and purple), but Kaffe Fassett had it right...they are beautiful together!

Still working on my online class for Dreamweaver (website building and manipulation) so that I can update my site all by myself. I'm having to dig out those college brain cells, but, surprise, surprise, they still work pretty well.

Tomorrow I'm announcing the start of a new Quilting Arts Alliance (or Art Quilt Alliance) group in Athens. We've all been talking about it (haha) for a year, so I'm jumping in and will announce the first meeting at the Cotton Patch Quilt Guild meeting tomorrow night. It will be based on the philosophy of the Fiber Arts Alliance in Asheville, NC. Basically, we all have groups in which we volunteer, take jobs, create for charity, etc. which are worthy of our time, but this group will be a once-a-month, low-stress group for art/contemporary quilters, hopefully with only three or four jobs: meeting leader, note taker, membership list keeper, leader for group shows. In this way, we'll be able to enjoy our time together and have an open forum for sharing information and ideas.

Best laid plans...hum. I hope I'm not the only one who wants it this way, haha. We'll find out.

TTYL