String Quilt

So, a few years ago I joined a friend of mine at a quilting retreat.  There were some ladies there selling fabric and patterns.  One of the patterns was for this windowpane quilt using old scraps.  The deal was if you bought the cake stack (the fabric cut into squares) and fabric, the lady selling the fabric brought her scraps and let us dig through to use in the little squares.  Some of the fabrics were pretty terrible on their own (which is the beauty of a quilt....together some fabrics would never sell-in a pack-they are necessary for the overall picture).  I don't know why this appealed to me, but I loved the idea of getting to dig through her scraps that were pieces of quilts she had made the years (she is a master quilter). It's  one of the same reason I always find thrift stores so appealing-each item has a story-and I feel like I'm rescuing....incidentally the same reason I can not be allowed into animal rescue clinics.
This quilt is by far my funkiest...it goes well in my living room-which may not be saying much, but the jewel tones were fun, and it makes a great lap quilt....and look at all those little scraps I rescued?

Basically, you take squares of fabric all the same side, and you cut a triangle out of a piece of sand paper and draw the line on the back of each piece.

I bought one solid fabric, the 'frame' and those strips to the same size (1 1/2 inches).  I put the fabric face to face, and pinned 1/4 inch over the triangle you drew.  Sew.

Flip it over, pull it over and iron it down.  The rest of the pieces don't matter far as size.  I did the same thing...pinned it to the border piece (red piece) in the quilt, matching edge to edge, then sewing down the strip at 1 quarter inch.  Folded the second piece back and repeated.

The red piece (or boarder piece) is the only one that needs to be 1 1/2 inch and sewed 1/4 inch and 1/4 inch b/c it's the only piece you need to matched.  I trimmed it down to the square again...

Then I sewed them all together, added a boarder, and then the binding (after it was quilted) was the same fabric as the border.

Check out some of those fabrics...yellow balloons, little dutch children....fabrics only a mother could love.  I had the quilter use a circle-ee design.  I'm sure that is the official name.

I used scraps to make a border on the back as well.

See....it goes well with the colors in my living room.  At least  that was my excuse.