Black and White Log Cabin Quilt Finished

It's done! I finished my black and white log cabin quilt!I really enjoyed quilting this quilt...I found several interesting patterns as I loopty-looped my way across the quilt.

I especially like this pattern that I did in this black area-it reminds me of the 19th century embroidery pattern I used in a corner of my Crazy Quilt.

This quilt was started last year for the Black and White Challenge. You can click on the button on my side bar to go to the B & W Challenge blog and see all the wonderful quilts, bags and more made for this challenge. (I even made an apron.)

I'm linking today to Finished for Friday at Lit and Laundry and Sew and Tell at Amylouwho.

Quilting log cabin and I think I've solved a problem

I started quilting on my black, white and red log cabin. I'm again doing a loopdy loop pattern-I liked doing it on my string quilt-but I'm trying to get rounder circles this time. Its gotten hot here and the air conditionering just doesn't cool my sewing room very well so I'm going to try to get some quilting in early in the morning before it gets too hot. It will be slow going-I quilted in the white on two squares and then ran out of room!Here's the back...its a Nancy Crow fabric that I've had for years-again waiting for just the right quilt. Isn't it perfect?!

Every summer I start to think about hand sewing projects-this project has been bugging me for quite a while but I think I have a solution. The stars are machine pieced and the rosettes are hand applique. After I put the rosettes on I had this brilliant idea-add leaves in a criss-cross pattern. I love how it looked basted...but if you look at the top row-you'll see the problem. It looks awful-UGH- when appliqued. I know the problem is that I should have thought of the leaves earlier! but what to do now. I tried larger leaves, different shape leaves...all to no avail.But I think I've got it solved now. Forget the leaves-what I like is the trail between the rosettes.
I'm thinking silk ribbon! I'm going to add to this feather vine-padded silk ribbon flowers. I think I thought of this because I showed my crazy quilt for the Spring Quilt Festival-I'm going to do something similar to the vines on the fan. Hope this works because this poor top has been sitting around for years! Seriously, I just couldn't think of anything and I just wouldn't give up!

Floral Mock Log Cabin Quilt Finished

I finished this quilt last week and its already at home at its new owners! The patchwork pattern is a variation on the mock log cabin pattern, woodpile. Its fast and fun to do-all strip piecing. I used all florals and it has a very sweet colorwash look, I think. It is machine quilted with an overall cable design.

Its a lap quilt and I thought it looked a little long and narrow so I added an extra narrow border only on the sides-which gave me room for a little free motion quilting in a leaf/vine pattern with a few leafy hearts thrown in.

Here's a close-up of one block-you can see the cable quilting too, done in a variegated thread. I use my walking foot whenever I do cables-I just gently turn the quilt like you do for any curved sewing - such as sewing sleeves.

I just love the back of this quilt...it reminds me of the wonderful North Country whole cloth quilts I saw on our trip to England a few years ago. It makes me think that maybe I want to make a machine quilted whole cloth quilt. (BTW, the pillow is hand quilted!)

Fall 2009 Quilt Festival

Amy of Park City Girl is hosting the Fall 2009 on-line Quilt Festival and this is my entry. I posted about this log cabin quilt earlier here. It is a double bed quilt and definitely one of my favorites!
Make sure you stop by Amy's- there are hundreds of blogs participating!

Bloggers Quilt Festival

Amy at Park City Girl is hosting a virtual Quilt Exhibit this week so hop on over to Amy's to join in the fun and share a favorite quilt of yours.



I'm showing this hand-quilted colorwash log cabin quilt with hexagon flower applique. I made this two years ago and think it is just perfect for a lovely spring day.

It is one of my favorite quilts...if you want to see my ultimate, #1 favorite (and already blogged about) quilt, that would be the Wedding Quilt.

Log Cabin Medallion Quilt Finished

Its been ages since I last posted: I've been totally obsessed with machine quilting this log cabin quilt!

I've mentioned before how this quilt was pieced years ago and then sat in the closet: now I know why-I think I just couldn't figure out how best to quilt it. I finally decided to quilt the log cabin medallion simply in the ditch using free motion...I'm happy with the result! I usually don't use alot of quilt- in- the- ditch in my quilts, certainly not as the "default" pattern but it really worked well on this quilt.

After I got the log cabin done, which took much longer than I thought it would! (the quilt is 80" x 96" so all the quilting took longer than I thought it would!), I couldn't decide how to quilt the pieced border-I'd always thought that I would quilt diagonal lines following the squares and in the end that is what I did with some extra diagonals added and a little quilt in the ditch again.

The pieced border is made up of two blocks-a double 9-patch and a Jacob's Ladder. (On the left is the double 9-patch which is a little hard to see because the blues have blended a bit in the pix) I got the idea from a quilt in Nifty Ninepatches by Carolann Palmer (its from the early'90s). When I started this quilt, it was going to be simply a Chimney and Cornerstone Log Cabin but when I tried different fabrics for the border I just didn't like anything. Then I thought of trying the double 9-patch/Jacob's Ladder in the border and I loved it! I love how the Log Cabin just seems to float on the border.

I also really like all the diagonal squares across the border picking up on the squares in Chimneys and Cornerstones. I always like to see what happens when I put two different blocks together-usually something interesting shows up.

All of the fabrics in the log cabin have been repeated somewhere in the border, two blue fabrics have been added as the "background" fabrics of the border squares and the red was added to give a little zing.
Its turned out that I finished this just at the right time. Yesterday my friend Maureen of the O'sheehan Quilt Gallery called and asked if I had a quilt for the new exhibit she's having at the Gallery! I think this quilt will fit in with the theme-an overview of the different possibilities with quilts-from traditional to contemporary.

If you're a member of the AQS, you may remember reading about Maureen's gallery and B&B and the quilt shop, the Quilt Center in the Fall 2007 issue of the AQS magazine. It was a great article with pictures of the gallery and quilt shop (and even a picture of me teaching a Baltimore Album class :)

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!