A Little Liberated Quilting

This may not be liberated quiltmaking in the truest Gwen Marston sense of the word (even though she did publish a book on string quilts), but it was certainly liberating for me, and it's probably as liberated as I'll ever get. Making a string quilt is truly mindless piecing at its best. Anything goes, and it's a perfect portable project. I can run my mouth all day at sewing group and I can't screw anything up!

For the pieced strips, I cut foundations from muslin or whatever fabric I had laying around that I didn't really have a use for, 4" x 8", and pieced scraps on them using a sew and flip technique. Then I sewed the pieced foundations end to end until I had a strip long enough for my quilt. The pieced strips were then alternated with solid strips and sewn together to create the top. The solid strips were cut 3-1/2" wide.

I needed 150 foundations for the pieced strips. Each vertical row required 11 foundations plus half of another to complete the row.

A queen sized quilt, 93" x 93", requires 12 solid strips and 13 pieced strips, plus borders. I added a 7" wide border on either side and a 7" wide border on the bottom. My son who is receiving this quilt is crazy about that burgundy batik and wanted the wider borders. The top of the quilt will probably be covered up with pillows, so I didn't really want a top border.

The quilt is on the longarm now, and I got about half of it quilted today. Tomorrow I'll try to get the other half done. The plan is to have it quilted and bound by the end of the week for delivery to my son. Lots of work left to do still.

The idea of working in a series appeals to me, and this was a fabulous scrap buster, so I have four more string quilts planned. When I get around to it, the next one will also be a vertical strippy, only the pieced strips will be all different widths.

A Spectacular Find

Today was Day 1 of our Mainely Fun Quilt Shop Hop, and ten of us hit the road early this morning and headed south to start the shop hop. There are eight shops on this small circuit, and we visited five of them today. Two of the five I had been to before, and I found two more with a contemporary flavor that I really liked and will visit again.

We stopped about 2:00 for lunch at Mike's Clam Shop in Wells. They have an extensive menu of seafood, steak, and chicken dishes, and the food was really good. I had a scallop basket with onion rings and cole slaw. Best onion rings and scallops I've had in ages. I'm in the white shirt in the photo.

I was on a mission to find a couple of books today; and I came home with five, all new releases, plus several patterns, and a few more half yard cuts of pinks for the pink and brown quilt I want to make.

Calico Basket in Windham, one of the shops we visited today, advertises that it carries 7000 bolts of fabric and over 1000 books, and that's where I hit the jackpot. I was browsing their extensive book racks when I unexpectedly came across a brand spanking new copy of Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking. I thought I was going to have apoplexy right there in the quilt shop. I was so excited I could barely contain myself, and I walked around that shop hugging my book and never saw another thing in the shop.

Liberated Quiltmaking was originally published in 1996 and has been out of print for many years. It has become the focus of a whole new style of quiltmaking, which encourages "liberated, unrestricted, outside the block" quilting. It has also spawned a blog ring and a number of blogs devoted to the method, most notably Tonya's at Lazy Gal Quilting. It is nearly impossible to find this book anywhere on the web, at least not at a price approaching anything close to reasonable. And I found it today at the same price it was available for after publication years ago.

I am going to bury myself in my books for the rest of the evening, then get up tomorrow morning and do it all over again!