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!