Two weeks ago, for Cheryl’s (Naptime Quilter’s) Workshop in progress, I asked two questions. The first was what color should I use to bind my string quilt.
After looking at all of the opinions, and looking at the binding fabric next to the quilt…
I decided that I liked the darker fabrics better (gray and blue) but since there was so much blue in the quilt, I chose the gray. Looking back, that is exactly what Cheryl suggested. If I had dark purple, though, I think that would probably have been my best choice, but I wanted to use what I already had. I like it a lot.
So, here is the final string quilt.
This quilt measured 95 inches x 71 inches before washing, and 91.5 x 67.5 after washing. WE LOVE IT!
My second question that I posed out to blog land is what I should do with these scraps…
I cut some 5.5 x 5.5 inch squares from the large pieces, but I had so many smaller pieces left over, so I made a few quilts.
With the long strips 3 inches wide, I strip pieced them with 3 inch strips of white, and then cut them into 5.5 inch squares.
I had enough of these squares to make one baby quilt top.
Then, I took the smaller scraps and made scrappy squares within squares.
Since I had some small scraps and some larger scraps, I chose to make the squares inside the squares various sizes.
Since I already did the math, here are the measurements (If you don’t want these, then skip to the next picture):
To get a 1 inch square inside a 5 inch square, you need:
- Center fabric:1.5 x 1.5
- Border fabric: 2 pieces of 1.5 x 2.5 , 2 pieces of 2.5 x 5.5
To get a 1.5 inch square inside a 5 inch square, you need:
- Center fabric: 2 x 2
- Border Fabric: 2 pieces of 2 x 2.25, 2 pieces of 2.25 x 5.5
To get a 2 inch square inside a 5 inch square, you need:
- Center fabric: 2.5 x 2.5
- Border Fabric: 2 pieces of 2 x 2.5, 2 pieces of 2 x 5.5
To get a 2.5 inch square inside a 5 inch square, you need:
- Center fabric: 3 x 3
- Border Fabric: 2 pieces of 3 x 1.75, 2 pieces of 1.75 x 5.5
To get a 3 inch square inside a 5 inch square, you need:
- Center fabric: 3 .5 x 3.5
- Border Fabric: 2 pieces of 3.5 x 1.5, 2 pieces of 1.5 x 5.5
To get a 3.5 inch square inside a 5 inch square, you need:
- Center fabric: 4 x 4
- Border Fabric: 2 pieces of 4 x 1.25, 2 pieces of 1.25 x 5.5
I framed them in .75 inch white fabric squares, and then sashed them with 2 inches of green fabric. This is the resulting quilt top.
Then, with the scraps of my scraps’ scraps, I did some wonky corners on some white squares.
I have seen butterfly quilts (here ) where they put the triangles on two of the corners on opposite sides. While I liked how that looked, I wanted mine to be more random. So, I chose to make some squares with three corner triangles, some with one corner triangles, and some with two corner triangles. I didn’t want to do any with four corner triangles, because they looked too much like wonky stars.
Here is the resulting quilt top. I love it!
Now I just have to think of some awesome backs….
Edit to add: I finished the modern butterfly quilt just now. But, I still have the other two that are backless.






