messygoat

As I was making the Log Cabin Star, I started separating the black, white, and gray fabrics and making monochromatic log cabin blocks at the same time. Because I have an addiction. Apparently.

I’m not sorry, though– when they started showing a strong design I was even happier!

I played with a few design ideas but didn’t want to make any more blocks, so I had to figure out a design that worked with the particular quantities of black/white, black/gray, and gray/white blocks that I had. This one almost worked but was a bit dull for my taste.

And then I found this one! Yay!

Last weekend I sewed the blocks together, layered it, and quilted it. Here’s the back of it. I quilted it with three different gray Aurifil threads in about an hour. It’s almost 36″ square, so it’ll be a good size to go under the foot of the featherweight in the front foyer of our house.

I hope to have it finished sometime next week, but I’ve got another one in the binding process at the moment.

Recently, I wrapped every individual piece of my fabric stash around cardboard sheets (comic book/magazine boards) that I bought from Amazon. As I did so, I cut 2 1.5″ strips off of each piece so that I could have an ongoing leader-ender project this year, enjoying the fabrics that I have accumulated rather than just accumulating them.

The process took a while, but I did finally get it all wrapped. I LOVE being able to see my fabrics this way!

 

Naturally, I couldn’t stand it and had to start making little log cabin blocks with these fabric strips. At the end of January, this is what I had.

Not wanting to take them down off of my design wall to go down to the Red Rooster (which doesn’t have a design wall), I just took the partial blocks I had and the bins of strips and made more. 

At the end of the weekend, I combined the two piles of blocks and started playing with layout concepts. This one made me happy, so I decided to finish sewing blocks to complete the design.

It also took a while.

I did finally prevail, and I sewed the blocks into rows and sewed the rows together over a period of about two weeks, between other projects.  Ella helped. 

 

And in case you wondered, Fibonacci is lurking in this one, too– each block has 13 pieces, and there are 144 blocks. Both are Fibonacci numbers, of course. The logs are 3/4″ wide (I trimmed to a precise width after every seam, so that accuracy did not depend on my seam allowance), so the blocks finish to 5 1/4″ and the quilt top will finish to 63″ square.

Last weekend I pieced a back for it from scraps that hadn’t been folded back onto boards, and I hope to get it layered and quilted very soon. I love the simplicity of the log cabin design, and the versatility that it affords. Even though it’s not particularly challenging to make, I savored the slow process of making the small blocks, and as a result I’m very attached to this quilt. I already have 35 more log cabin blocks made and more in process, as I’ve continued to pull strips from that bin between other projects. What a fun way to work!