Karamarie

What is the Saturday quilt show you are mentioning?

Thanks

Lee in Richmond

I have backed charity quilts with sheets from Goodwill, more than once. I say charity quilts only because the newer sheets can be pretty dense and are hard to needle when doing binding by hand, whereas I could use a serpentine stitch to finish a charity one.

quilting cat

Your soft, well used sheets should make great string quilt foundations. Press well with a little starch after trimming to easily handled chunks, then cut your foundations.

cashs_mom

I learned that when I made a jacket out of a log cabin variation. I used up some fabrics I didn't like that much but they were the right colors. They looked great in the finished jacket. It's one of the things I really like about string quilts. You can use up so many scraps and fabrics you might otherwise not use.

tuckyquilter

My Opinion:
I use the thinnest tissue paper I can find. Usually get it at a big box store and they sell it in boxes of 1000 sheet. BUT I just share with friends. OLD phonebooks (at least 1 yr old to make sure the ink is set) are not bad either.

I personally don't like the extra weight that a fabric adds to the blocks, and dryer sheets are ok, but still pretty darn thick. The idea is to make the Paper Pieced blocks (PP) with the least amount of bulk possible, to avoid quilting issues later.

I make string blocks all the time as leader/enders when sewing other quilt blocks. I sew other blocks to the tops and cut like a HST. I've used them to make star points around a square.

SO go for the gold on your string blocks. Great way to use up your smaller strips and they don't have to be the same width either.