Crazy week and Log Cabin Quilts

This has been a crazy week. It started with a trip to Tel Aviv with some friends to see a quilt exhibit celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv and then attending a lecture by the Australian quilter Pam Holland. The lecture was very interesting, I think Pam is probably best known for her portraits but what I found most interesting was her use of fabric pens. Now I've inked on quilts and I've even stencil painted a bit on quilts but what Pam does is really drawing and filling in and the fabric stays soft and lovely! I have to get some of those pens!


Monday, I went to the supermarked-why does it become a day long project...shopping and then putting away. I complained to my husband that night that I'd done nothing all day! His answer: if you haven't sewn, you think you've done nothing! Too true! I usually go the supermarket once a month-is that making it better or worse?

Tuesday, I finally got back to the black and white log cabin quilt-cut the sashing and sewed the horizontal sashing to the blocks, pressed and laid the rows out of the bed in the guest room. Something didn't look right! I'd had 1 1/2" in my head as the cutting width and somehow that became the finished size and I'd cut the sashing 2" wide. That's what comes of not writing things down!

I've pinned the bottom sash so you can see what I intended and above you can see what I got! First, I thought "I'll pick", then procrastination set in and I thought "Maybe its not so bad..."
I finally decided yesterday-I picked and trimmed the sashes and now I'm back where I was on Tuesday!
This is the colorwash log cabin quilt that you can see peeking out from under the black and white blocks. It was the first of several colorwash log cabin quilts I did and the darkest-I started doing them with mediums as the darkest value and I really liked the look even more . (I'll have to look for a picture.)

While indecision reigned about the black and white quilt, I at least decided to machine quilt one of the big bed quilts in the closet. Whenever I have a large quilt to pin-baste, I put it in the frame if its empty. (I usually just crawl around on the floor for lap size quilts. )

This quilt is also a log cabin, its a medallion log cabin with this big wide pieced border. I had to pick out on this quilt too-its been in the closet so long that I realized I had no fabric left for the binding. The quilt top used to have a narrow outer border in the red fabric-so I took that off and I've put it away for the binding. I think I'll get a new free audio book from Librivox to listen to while I pin baste.

Ah books-I found a fun book challenge at Fractured Toys while visiting around seeing everyone's VTT goodies. Its the 2009 Support your Local Library Challenge and the idea is that you read 12, 25 or 50 books this year that you've borrowed from the library and you write and share a short book review on the challenge's blog.

Even though I live overseas, luckily and happily for me, our local library has a large collection of English books (as well as French and Russian collections besides the main Hebrew collection). I've decided to join-I'm choosing the 12 book option because any more and I'll never sew! This will be fun, though I'm a bit nervous about writing the reviews-its been years and years (okay decades really!) since I wrote a book report :)
The Local Library Challenge is being hosted by J. Kaye's Book Blog and she has several challenges going on-really one to suit just about every reader!

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!