mug rug, strings, and Christmas

Well, I've been a bit busier these days on my quilting.  But first, I need to show the mug rug I received from the Country Fair Mug Rug swap last month.  Really cute, and City Sandie did a fine job.  :)  She was also nice enough to tuck in a little extra...a western book marker, and a quilt pattern.  There are some really nice ladies on the HGTV quilting and needlework forum.

Lately I've been in a mode of wanting to use up some of my stash.  I've got a bag that I've been tossing strings into for a few years now, and its bulging.  Strings are strips of fabric left from other projects, or maybe even cut on purpose, usually from 1-2.5" wide, and various lengths.  I've been wanting to try a quilt-as-you-go quilt, and started out with blocks that were 12.5" square.  My original thought was to make it 3 or 4 squares wide by 4 or 5 squares long, and add borders.  This was my original layout, before I had all squares complete.  I could see it wasn't going to be big enough to do quite what I wanted.

So I expanded to the idea of 24 squares, making it 4x6 squares.  Then I ran into a design opportunity.  I didn't have enough of the fabric for the blue center strip, so I decided to work with some of the blocks having a burgundy center strip, allowing a design to show up.  I also added in another blue fabric for some of the center stripes, and scattered them through so it looked planned.

You'll notice the burgundy in the 4 center squares, and also in the four corners.  They're not sewn together at this point, because I'll be quilting each square individually before joining. 

Here's some of the squares that are quilted.  The blocks with one color in each square are the back side, and of course the strips are the front.  I'm just doing simple quilting on it since I'm not comfortable with free motion quilting.  A lot of people stitch in the ditch along each strip. but I really didn't want to mess with that much stitching.

I hope by this next weekend to start joining them, and getting the border prepared.  Oh, and remember I said the blocks were initially 12.5" square?  Now they're 11.5".  Funny how that works out, isn't it?  Little glitches here and there as I learn what I'm doing called for a modification.   No biggee.  My strings, my quilt.

I have another string in progress, but this one jumped out in the lead.  I hope next time I'm back to bring you up to speed on the other one.  

Before getting the string quilts started, I made a Christmas tree skirt.  It's not quite in the league with the one I made Angela and Robert, and I really don't want it to be.  That one was pretty special to me.  However, I like this one too, partly because I used some of my Christmas fabric stash.  As I put in some angel squares, that particular piece of fabric had a little note attached that it was purchased in the mid-90's, 1994 or '96 if I remember right.  Where's it going to go?  I don't know yet.  I don't put up a tree anymore, but I'm thinking it might make a nice gift to someone one of these days.  A lady on the HGTV forum gives tree skirts for wedding gifts.  I'm thinking that might be a possibility.  Or I may just use it as a little table topper.

  The pic with no borders might show up a little sharper.   Don't know yet how I'll quilt it, possible just a cross-hatch.

Guess that's it for now.  Have a good week!