Quilters quiz me vis à vis quips & quackery

Apparently some of my friends were astonished that I agreed to do a brief presentation of my string quilts to one of the bees (the Miniature Quilt Bee to be exact). While it is true that I have called the guild that sponsors these bees the Symbionese Liberation Quilt Guild the fact remains that I do still have friends there & when they ask me to do something that does not involve anything from me but to be listened to & admired, I am pretty much willing to do it. It helps of course that this group does not meet before noon. Finally, the SLQG was not actually charging for me to be there while I was expected to donate my time & that was indeed the clincher. No it was not; it has been the clincher in the other direction (group charge but me not get paid). This time the clincher was J*** asking so elegantly if I would "be so kind as to" & of course I said yes.

This is how I happened a few afternoons ago to be standing in the community rec center blathering on about foundation free string piecing. Again.

The group theme is mini-quilts: those small scale replicas of larger quilts, with tiny patterns on tiny bits of fabric held together with tiny stitches. Whereas I consider a 4' by 4' quilt to be on the small side. They have been making mini-string quilts last month, this month; mini-quilts take longer than you would think.

For me, this meant getting together at least some of the string quilts I have made & then flung to the far corners of the US. I wanted to say earth, but although I have sent strings, sample blocks & patterns to Australia & Iraq (they asked for them, no really) that seemed an exaggeration. Although now that I think about it most of my string quilts are in Florida & New England, which are actually the closest corners of the US. Whatever, it meant tracking them down.  Some were just across town, but others had further to travel. 

& track them I did, with varied success.

While not the first I ever made, this is the original pattern.  Concept, too as there were many many classic pooh scraps left over from something.  The first is, I am sorry to say somewhere in limbo.  It left here in March 2008 to be given as a mitzvah for one of my niece's First Communion (yes, we like to mix things up).  & there it has sat, still pending for reasons I am not sure I understand but...I digress.

My sister sent the quilts she & her daughter got one year at holiday time.  Guess which one belongs to the grown woman & which belongs to the child who just painted her new bedroom weirdly orange-red? 


From my mom the first string quilt I made.  I think.  The scraps were from a much larger project & we needed to use them up & clear them out.  & I showed a few others but they are either pretty routine or their pics have already been shown on this blog so Iwill spare you.  As I look over my left-overs though I am realzing I could use some freshening.