fall log cabin, a finish

 

closing out the year with a finish from earlier this month i just realized i never posted about. i completed the handquilting on fall log cabin just as fall was about to become winter. december is christmas season, but winter doesn't technically begin until december 21st, the winter solstice and d1's birthday. so while everyone else on the quilty internet was posting about their christmas makes, i was still in autumn, and it's where i'm ending the quilting year.

i really enjoyed the handquilting on these log cabin blocks, even though i managed to bungle nearly half of the blocks when making them, which made it harder to handquilt since they didn't all follow the pattern the way they should. 

usually with a log cabin block you start at the center "hearth" square and add pieces by rotating a quarter turn each time. it's simple enough, but i turned my blocks the wrong way more than once. from a distance, they all look just fine. it's only when you study them up close that you notice something is occasionally off. take the bottom right square in the above photo - you can see the hearth is not centered because i put the very last strip on the opposite side of where it should have been. but it's still my favorite block of the whole quilt because of the fabric pairings in it. maybe someone will get a laugh out of it someday if they notice what i did.

fortunately, i seem to have got the hang of making the block correctly as i'm currently working on a christmas liberty + crossweave log cabin quilt. fingers crossed i continue to get it right from here on out!

i really love this cozy, traditional quilt made in modern prints and fall colors. there are a few prints i absolutely dislike, but they worked color-wise, so i included them. i never learn, do i? i know that putting an ugly or unsatisfying print in with prints i do like won't make me like it anymore than i already don't, but i do it anyway. and it's ok; i am actually getting better at not being bugged by those poor fabric choices. this time i even managed to make one block almost entirely from the prints i like least in the quilt, which makes me laugh now. overall, still highly satisfied with the results.

being a fall quilt, i really wanted to shoot this one in a fall setting. lucky for me, in our desert home the fall colors don't really start until december. in fact, they weren't as far along as i hoped when we took these finish photos, but they were good enough. 

i had my eye on this local riparian retreat full of changing cottonwood trees as i was finishing up the quilt and looking for a location to shoot it. i've never stopped there before even though i've driven past it several times a week for a decade now. it was a great find and perfect quilt shoot location. the only problem may be i used up all the shot locations already in this one shoot.

fall is long gone now, but there will be another one soon enough with the new year.

i wish you all a happy and cozy new year!

christmas crossweave (and liberty) log cabins, a start

i am still loving log cabins. and liberty + crossweave. in fact, i started and nearly flimsied a christmas liberty + crossweave log cabin the second week of this december. man, it was a fun project while i had time for it. i had high hopes of getting it fully sandwhiched mid-december before my college kiddos arrived home for the holidays and maybe even completing it on new year's eve, making my tenth finish for the year. but . . . as i was completing the flimsy, i sewed two different 5', full-length seams incorrectly and spent my allotted completion time unpicking and resewing those seams. ugh.

so the flimsy never happened. i got lost in the holidays and having my entire fam together for the first time in 3 years, never once again touching the project. (but the youngest and i did have a nice handstitching session a few days ago and i did make progress on "wiltshire rows.")

i had a couple yards of this lovely deep forest green crossweave stashed away, which i always intended to use for a liberty + crossweave quilt. i think it's one of moda's older crossweaves from at least 5 years ago, from before they updated their crossweave collection. i have tried and tried to find more of it because i actually would like to use it in at least two other quilts, but i cannot locate it anywhere. the new moda crossweave greens aren't anywhere near this dark. so i've had to figure out how to economize it to stretch over the two quilts i already started with it.

originally, i was making these cute little 6" "star hollow" blocks found on jolene klassen's "blue elephant stitches" blog and in her "a year of quilts" book. but i found making them at this size a bit tedious and actually wasteful of my liberty fabrics. if i was using scraps, these would have been a good use of them. but cutting new yardage to make the little corners was wasting nearly as much of the fabric as i was actually using. they sure are cute, though!

this pattern at the small size i chose also wasn't showcasing the beautiful liberty prints much. 

after making a few stars, i also began making log cabin blocks with sets of four liberty prints in christmas colors or from christmas collections.

there are a range of pinks, maroons, reds, and various greens in the prints i pulled. these were my original picks, which i added to and then shuffled into five sets.

the log cabin blocks, made with a bright red solid center and 2.5" liberty strips came together really quickly and were turning out so cute. i abandoned the stars for now and just made these. with 2 reds and greens each set, i made 2 blocks and then inverted the order of the prints for another 2 blocks. there are 4 blocks per set, 5 sets. this makes 20 blocks.

i had no problems with making the blocks correctly as i chained pieced them in sets. i learned to make sure the most recent piece i had attached was on the bottom before i added the next piece to the right side, and this time had no problems keeping myself straight. 

i carefully worked out how to attach all the sashing and what cuts to make. but . . . i forgot to add the darn seam allowance to my sashing cuts . . . twice. ugh. so painful. i was already really tight on the sashing and i hope i haven't wasted it because of the mistakes. maybe it only means the seams aren't where i intended them to be, which won't be a big deal.

it's going to be a lovely little lap quilt for our december services in years to come. many of my girls have already commented how much they like it. and i'm really looking forward to the handquilting to come. next year, of course!

as for the stars, i have an idea.

and one more liberty christmas lap quilt in mind, too.

good thing christmas comes every year!

fall trails, a finish

 

when i was making my fall log cabin quilt, i started thinking about how nice some of the fabrics would be paired with a lot of low-volume fabrics. there were many leftover scraps from the 2.5" strips i was cutting for the log cabin blocks, so i decided i'd make a fall version of a scrappy string quilt i'd seen from @catelowetextiles on instagram. 

many quilters classify scraps 2.5" or narrower and about 9" or longer as "strings" when sorting their scraps. you can make things like string stars, string blocks, or spiderweb quilts with string scraps. i like the format cate used. she sewed strings of differing widths but similar lengths into rows, trimmed them, and stacked those rows vertically to create her top. there is a lot of room for improv here and just doing what you like.

i used some strips as narrow as 1" cut, which finish at 1/2". i love my skinniest little bits in this quilt. it was a great way to add a small punch of color that didn't overpower the general soft vibe of the quilt.

this is a gentle, subtle quilt. the overall pattern isn't particularly exciting. it's the kind best enjoyed up close, the one you study for the little bits tucked into it that surprise or delight you, like the marshmallows on a roasting stick up there in the righthand corner.

the quilting of this piece is my least favorite aspect. it was an experiment on my part, one that taught me more by what didn't work than anything else. 

i was batch quilting several quilts at once and was tired of doing modern loops. i thought of this pencil doodle i would do in my notes at school all the time that i thought would make a pretty quilting pattern. executing it didn't work out as anticipated. this quilt was just a fun side project to use scraps, so i wasn't worried about making some mistakes and felt free to experiment. 

it hasn't crinkled nearly as much as i expected, meaning my quilting isn't hiding as much as i'd have liked. i didn't put the rows close enough together; denser would have been better. i should have marked a center line for the rows to follow because the seams aren't continuous from one section of the quilt to the next, meaning i lost my line several times when i moved from one string row to the next. that's less obvious than the design issues.

i was lazy and could have done better. but it's okay. i'm not too fussed about it. better luck (and planning and execution) next time.

the binding is lovely.

i've used this monotone floral from amy sinabaldi's playground fabrics line for art gallery fabrics in several quilts. it's a good warm-toned neutral that plays well in many places. very nice binding that adds a feminine touch to the quilt.

the backing is maybe my favorite part of the quilt, actually. i love the pairing of a bonnie christine for art gallery fabrics painterly floral with the snow white print from heather ross's far, far, away 3 collection for windham. i was able to incorporate both selvages pretty successfully.

i had to order large pieces of both fabrics to make the backing. when using scraps of them on the front, i realized they'd make the perfect pair for the back. i had a fat quarter of the snow white print that i thought was cute, but because of the large spacing and figures i wasn't sure where it would be very useful on a quilt. the answer is it makes a great backing. that's the only way to showcase all the fun different parts that are so spread out on the print.

this was a low-stakes, relaxed make for me. it was never going to be the favorite quilt in the house, which is just fine. it's cute and comfy, which is all it needs to be. i'm quite content.