I've never heard of inchies being all joined together before. Interesting idea. I've always considered them self contained works of art, not as pieces of something larger.
I first learned about them in Quilting Arts magazine (Aug/Sept 2007) and trade them, like fabric postcards and artist trading cards, or use them as embellishment on larger pieces, zipper pulls, shade pulls, light chains, that kind of thing. Here's a link to the original QA article by Normajean Brevik
http://www.quiltingarts.com/cpsmag/BrevikPDF.pdf