Rainbow strings

I get so inspired reading your blogs and seeing the beautiful quilts you all make! Just a few days ago I was looking at string quilts on the Heartstring Blog and also came across Samantha's beautifully color-planned baby string quilt on Diary of a Mad Fabricholic. Those were bubbling in my mind while I sorted through our Project Linus stash of solids, hoping to find enough of one piece to make center strips for a whole quilt. Then inspiration struck! I had seen a zig-zag string quilt on someone's blog and it occurred to me that a rainbow zig-zag would need less of each central color (always thrifty with the Linus stash!) and could be really fun. And what if the strings were chosen with color in mind, each zig-zag having strings of the next color of the rainbow?
So I set to work. What a blast! (And what a mess -- piles of strings everywhere!) I cut the blocks to be rectangles, but was working fast and didn't think ahead. Uh-oh. You can rotate a square block to get the center strips going any direction you want, but you can't do that with a rectangle. I had to use the frog stitch on half the blocks (because, being efficient, I had already sewn all the center strips down before realizing my mistake). I think that's what TV is for -- giving you something to do while you un-sew. I also discovered that I had cut a few of the foundations too small, but fortunately I have been able to compensate for that. I guess inspirational stars were shining that day but my technical skills stars were under deep cloud cover! In any case, I am so pleased with this quilt. Obviously I still have to finish the blue, purple, and red rows, but I couldn't wait to share this.

I also want to give many, many thanks to Amy at The Calico Cat, who has donated some of her solid brights for use in our string quilts. It's greatly appreciated!

And here's the new fabric I bought for my Stroop quilt background. I couldn't find the one I had just a little piece of, and this will probably be ok, but I don't like it as much. I'll have to let it stew a bit before deciding how to proceed.