I may be totally wrong, but for some reason I think of a blizzard quilt as being similar to this one. Bonnie Hunter calls this the String-X .
http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/06/string-x.html
I think the directions I saw years ago had you sewing a long strip of the strings and then cutting them to length for your block.
But then again, maybe I just dreamed it, lol. Laura