String Quilt Blocks For Heros Foundation Auction

I have been given the opportunity to participate in a project to raise funds for cancer research.  Val at How About Pink Please blog is putting together a string quilt for an auction to be held at the Heros Foundation.  She put out the word last week looking for volunteers to make one (or two) quilt blocks to donate to her project.  In January I lost my mother-in-law to pancreatic cancer so this project is something I really wanted to help with.  Above are the two quilt blocks I will be getting off in the mail to Val tomorrow.  She requested String Quilt Blocks.  This technique was new to me so with the help of a tutorial she posted on her blog I was able to figure it out.  It's really quite simple and I'm loving this type of quilt block construction.  I took pictures as I taught myself and will be making many more of these in the future.  Here are the steps involved:
Cut a piece of paper to the size of block you want, then mark off a one inch section horizontally through the middle........

Cut a one inch strip of fabric in a solid color of your choosing.  Val wanted white for all her quilt block submissions.  Adhere this first strip to the paper with glue.....

Cut strips of fabric in varying widths and you are ready to go.  Val wanted the strips to be anywhere between 1 and 2.5 inches wide.   Lay the second strip face down on top of the first strip and sew a tight line at 1/4 inch.  Set the width of the stitch to a 1.5 setting and back stitch at the beginning and end of each strip.  I back stitched about 3 times to make sure nothing came undone!

Continue sewing strips and being creative until the paper is covered.........

This being my first attempt I learned that for in the future I will try to gauge the placement of different widths a little better so I won't end up with tiny empty sections on the corner that require a small piece of fabric.......

When completed, flip the block over and trim the excess fabric off.  You will notice on the paper that the "sew lines" have a perforated look to them.  This will help in tearing the paper off the quilt block.  This is also why you secure your stitching tightly at the beginning and end of each strip.

After trimming the block, I pressed it with my iron using lots of steam.  On one block I had to do some additional trimming.

Val wanted bright, colorful blocks.  I think I filled her request pretty good! 

I'm loving how these turned out and looking forward to making more in the future.

For Val's auction entry she has asked all participants to make a 4 x 6 card with our name on one side and a picture and few sentences about who our quilt blocks are in honor of on the back side.  Here's the picture I'm putting on my card and what I'm saying about

 my mother-in-law....

My mother-in-law, Patricia Schwartz.  Lost her battle with Pancreatic Cancer

In January 2011.  These are the faces of true love and the sadness they (we)

endured. I was first going to put a happy picture of Pat on this card, but this is what cancer does to a family and I thought it was more fitting for this occasion. She was the bravest fighter we’ve ever seen. She had strength, courage and confidence and was full of grace.