What IS it about fabric that's so fascinating???

FINALLY got in gear today and spent the entire day making mountains - okay molehills of 2" strips. Prep work for my son's wedding quilt. He and J2 are getting married next July! Hip hip hooray!! I've been mulling over patterns and picked a log cabin. Both my kids are really hard on quilts ... use them to death and come begging for me to fix them! This one will be sturdy! [I hope!] Log cabin is on my 'Life List' so might as well start one this year.

I saw a cool rainbow log cabin on Maryquilts web site. The woman is seriously talented. She has instructions for many wonderful quilts there - but of course, not this one! How like me! But it's fairly simple I just had to figure out where the colors went. So looked up the rippling waters diagram in "Log Cabin Quilts Unlimited" by Cox & Gordon. Drew it out on graph paper and colored it in with my colored pencils!!

You can get so lost in going thru stash. I started with the 'width of fabric' strips I cut off fabric that didn't 'make the move' here to Oregon. I left tons of fabric. G cut me 5 inch strips off of it for presents after we moved, but when I was back last April, G brought the rest of it over to J's and we stripped it up for whoever wanted it - I mailed a paper box back to Oregon with my portion!

Yes, moving is hard [but I'm almost over it - 15 months later, can you tell???] LOL! - I sold or donated 1/3 of my stash and then I ended up leaving at least 1/3 of what was still there and thank goodness I did! We barely fit everything into the truck AND this condo! After going thru those stacks I had to pull reds, yellows and oranges from my stash and strip them up too. Then went thru a LARGE box of scraps because I can use them for the start of the log cabin blocks. It's going to be very scrappy - kind of like me!!

We have a small condo and DH was worried we'd never get use of our diningroom table back - ever! What a mess! SIX HOURS later - I have six small stacks of colored 2 inch strips. But I thought of quilting friends back in Nebraska all day! Since it was rainy, very windy and grey outside I enjoyed my rainbow inside.

It's so much fun to go thru your stash ... all your favorites are in there - you know!!! AND lots of fabrics you never would have guessed you had! I was cutting strips with the selvedge too - my oldest marked selvedge was 1986(!) but I know some are older - like that VIP Moss Rose that I still have a 'bit' in 3 colors! I have been known to buy my old favorite fabrics at garage sales ... but there's no guarantee that it wasn't the original fabric I bought in 1986!! And today it got picked for a quilt!!!

Tomorrow - I'll make at least one of the 64 log cabin blocks to try it out!!! Don't you love 3 day weekends?

Happy Labor Day, everyone!