Thank you all for your input, advice, pictures, videos. It is helping me tremendously. I think I understand just pulling a string and sewing. I just wasn't sure if I could liberate myself from cutting the strings all the same size. I think I'm going to try to basically use them at whatever size they are right now and see how it goes. I think I am going to piece them on muslin. I live in Florida and I think that this is one quilt that I am not going to use batting in between. I've seen on different blogs that you don't necessarily have to use batting every time. So this whole quilt is going to be one huge trial and error experience. Hopefully it will all work out okay.