Quilt Show - String Quilts

Onward with the Berthoud Outdoor Quilt Show. Today it is String Quilts. I know a lot of you do string quilts. I've done my fair share, too. It's safe to say that it is a great way to use up scraps. I used this technique to get myself out of sewing slumps because it is great mindless sewing.


This first quilt is a stunning example of string piecing. Each large diamond is made up of 64 smaller string pieced diamonds. That is 272 total string pieced diamonds! If you look closer you will see that the quiltmaker put a solid colored scrap in the center of each diamond and when she pieced the diamonds together alternated those colors so you can see a ring of red, or green, or cheddar, or blue. This quilt was part of the antique trunk show and is owned by Jeananne Wright. O, BTW, look at the portion of the quilt to the left. notice how the edge is just ever-so-slightly scalloped? I know it looks like it was backed with different colors but it was one color: yellow.


This is a newer quilt and according to the statement accompanying the quilt, it hung in the Governor's office for two years. This is another great example of not only using scraps of fabric but some leftover piecing tidbits. Although, I assume that the bits in this quilt were made specifically for it because of it's history.

In the closeup of this quilt, you will notice something that should not be there when you enter a quilt in a show. Especially a black quilt! Did you see the white pet hair? You will also notice a pieced area and also some shark's teeth. In case you don't know, in sewing, and specifically heirloom sewing, shark's teeth are a fabric embellishment that looks like a prairie point. And see the red along the edges of the strings? Those are flanges and didn't really photograph well.


This last photo is of a quilt that does nothing for me. I can't really call it a string quilt. To me string quilts are exciting because of all the different sizes used. This is very static and bland because all the blocks are the same size and also the blocks and the bars are the same width. It's a great utility quilt, though.

I spent Friday and Saturday up at a lake in Wyoming. CarGuy and B went up on Thursday and picked out a prime camping spot. I went up on Friday with W. It was nice and not too hot. Unfortunately, the guys picked a small peninsula that was surrounded by blooming willows. I didn't know I was so allergic to them until this weekend. *sigh* It is going to take days a long time to recover from this. The hood of our white truck was a lemon-lime color by the time we left.