Strings and Kites

My bags of strings were pretty stuffed - so I spent a chunk of Saturday sewing string blocks.

I really liked the wavy strings I made a few months ago (which I still need to sew together).  I wanted to make more wavy blocks.  I picked an easier design - straight across instead of the diagonal, and random placement instead of coordinating color and shade.  These went together so much faster!  I could easily work on several at once instead of carefully focused on one or two.

Although the intent had been to randomize the colors, each block seemed to gravitate to a color scheme.  It appears I had a lot of gold strips of fabric, too.  I'm not sure I like the blocks.  Heck, I'm not sure what I'll make with them.  Needs more experimentation.


I started some string kites late last year, using the strips that were too short or skinny to use for the wavy blocks.  The idea was a black or white strip through the middle, then colors on either side.  That was easy enough, but what to do with them?  I didn't want to line them all up the same direction.  But I also wanted to try a different design than my last two kite quilts.  

I bought the Kites Plus ruler because it could be used for 60° triangles and hexies as well the kites.  However, it's hard to find finished quilts that use this ruler - which is how I get inspired.  I found this Blacksmith quilt, converted it to pencil sketch, then printed it out.  I spent a chunk of Friday evening folding and cutting and visualizing what I could do with the kite blocks.  Unfortunately, given the size I wanted to make the blocks, incorporating them into design like this would make a massive quilt.

Back to the drawing board.  (Still - this might make a neat quilt in the future!)

I spent a chunk of Saturday morning playing with little kite cutouts and eventually hit upon a design that I liked that would work with the 8" kites.  However, I didn't like my current color placement with the latest.  I spent Sunday morning ripping out and restitching the blocks together.  It has wonky squares within squares.  I need a few more completed blocks to get a better feel, but it should be cool!