Quilts for wounded soldiers

In honor of our Memorial Day, HeartStrings members worked on making blocks and Chinese coins sections that will be assembled into quilts for wounded veterans. We'll continue to make and collect both through July 4th.

If you're interested in joining us, you can find instructions for making RWB HeartStrings blocks by clicking this link.

If you'd rather make Chinese Coins sections, instructions can be found here.

For the mailing address for RWB blocks or RWB Chinese Coins sections, please email Mary at mmcjohnson@gmail.com

Are you getting ready to piece RWB blocks?

In preparation for making Red/White/Blue blocks on Memorial Day weekend, I've pulled my bins out and cutting foundation blocks will be next.

For guidelines for piecing the blocks check out this post from earlier this week.

Memorial Day Weekend

Won't you join us sometime during the Memorial Day weekend (May 23 - 26) to work on HeartStrings blocks or quilts that will go to our wounded and returning veterans?

You can either make HeartStrings blocks using just red/white/blue strings to send in for group quilts or work on your own quilt to be donated.

For blocks to be sent in, the following instructions should be used:

HEARTSTRING BLOCKS - to be pieced on a cotton fabric foundation; muslin or any cotton fabric can be used, if using dark or printed fabric foundations they shouldn't be visible through the strings pieced on top of it.

Please start with a foundation that is 10 inches square.

Using only Red/White/Blue strings, use a 2 inch BLUE string for the center and add strings on either side of the center strip until the entire foundation is covered. Refer to the above photo if you have any questions about how the block should look - you can click on the photo to see a larger view.

You may use strips of any width up to 3 inches wide in your blocks; you may use strips all the same width or a variety of different widths in each block. You can even use strips that are not a consistent width down their entire length if you wish.

You can use any 100% cotton Red/White/Blue fabric for your strips once you've got the blue starter strip in the center.

When you've covered the entire foundation, press it and then trim it back to 9 and 1/2 inches square.

Email me for the address to mail your finished block or to tell us what YOU are working on.

Mary Johnson at mmcjohnson@gmail.com

Sit back and enjoy the show

I've just finished updating our online album of quilts completed in 2008. As you'll note, some of our donation quilts are not string quilts. We have tops that are donated to us for finishing and sometimes group members make and donate non-string quilts themselves.