blue and white log cabin

I seem to be on a one-post-per-month schedule these days. Oh, well. I have finished a couple of things. I'll try to get some of them up here.

My first log cabin! I have been wanting to try one, but I didn't want to get bogged down in millions of scraps and skinny "logs." So I tried this super quick log cabin technique from Stitches in Play. I used 7 different blue fabrics and 6 low value neutrals and I tried to get the fabrics mixed up in all the possible combinations. You'll have to go check out the tutorial to see exactly how to assemble the blocks -- but the basic idea is that you sew small pieces in series to the fabric for the next size "log" -- trust me, it went really quickly. I trimmed up the blocks twice, each time I hit a full square.

I tried out another new technique -- quilt as you go! After I assembled each block, I quilted it onto a square of batting with a big square spiral in gray thread. This way I could rotate the square as I worked, without having to muscle around the whole quilt, which ended up lap size at about 50 x 60 inches. Then I sewed all the quilted squares together and pressed the seams open. Since I use a lightweight batting it wasn't too bulky. I sandwiched the top and back and stitched in the ditch around each block. You miss out on having the spiral quilting on the back, but given how much easier it was to quilt, it worked pretty well. I mean, it's the BACK, right?

And another new technique on the binding -- this idea comes from Rachael at Stitched in Color -- instead of sewing the binding to the front of the quilt and hand sewing all the way around the back, stitch the binding onto the back of the quilt and then stitch it down in front with a zigzag stitch. You can also use a straight stitch, though the advantage to the zigzag is that you don't have to worry as much about the placement of the line of stitching on the back, since the zigzag stitching is wider. Does that make sense? It worked well and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out, though I do enjoy hand stitching the binding. This is a good alternative when you're in a hurry, or when you think hand stitching might not stand up to enough abuse.

This was a gift for my darling mom and stepdad -- here's the quilt at home in their pretty living room!