Showing posts with label Maryquilts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maryquilts. Show all posts

Monday, September 7, 2009

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!