Miniature log cabin. Sewing, silk.

I have been making some miniature pieced log cabin patchwork blocks, just to try and fix in my mind the order in which the logs are pieced. I thought it was better to sew minatures, and by hand, rather than larger blocks by machine. I am hoping it will put the piecing order back into my memory!

A miniature block, 6cm square, needs a template, and I have marked some calico, complete with numbers! The fabric will go on the other side of the template, and I can sew along the lines, and see what I'm supposed to be doing.

So the central square is tacked in place, a lovely gold dupion silk. I'm using silk for the whole block.

The square begins to grow,

and the back starts to resemble a mad chaos of stitches, although it isn't really chaos,

and finally, the square finished,  put into a greetings card, and resting on a tiny easel.

I have made several, and am so pleased with them I've made them into greetings cards, and put them onto my Etsy shop. https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/quarto17?ref=si_shop

Lovely little log cabin blocks!

Keeping warm with Log Cabin sewing. Quilting. Loving it.

Setting up the sewing machine in my study. What a pleasure! After a break of about 10 years, I have had the strong desire to start sewing again for a while, and the time between Christmas and New Year has given me a chance to try it.

I have never been a traditional quilt maker, but I do like the strip piecing method that gives a block called log cabin. I have used it a lot, but in my own way! The square blocks should be half one colour and half another. Mine don't quite do that.

 I couldn't quite believe how much I had forgotten about sewing strips of fabric into squares, and also how much I loved doing it. I must buy an unpicker however, which will speed up the correcting of mistakes. But the virtue of the method is that the quilt top grows quickly.

I love the way a busy pattern on a fabric becomes so intricate when cut up and pieced, and the shapes formed by the solid colours. This is a lap quilt, or I suppose a wall hanging. Life is too short to make full bed quilts. I rather like the finished quilt top, photographed on my bed earlier.

Not a brilliant photo, but it gives an idea of the three broken diagonal stripes made of strong coloured dupion silk. I need wadding and a backing fabric, and then to try and remember how to hand sew the quilting.

Here's one I sold a long time ago.  A friend spotted it in a house he was visiting, and photographed it for me.

Lots more planned! What a lovely start to 2014.

log cabin quilts

Years ago I made quilts. They were mostly about 45 inches square, because that was the size of the floor space in the tiny sitting room in the very small house I lived in at the time, and were intended to be lap quilts or wall hangings.  I made and sold several in the 'log cabin' style, and was recently sent a photo of this one - sold  possibly 12 years ago, and now looking very nice hanging on a wall. A friend had seen it and recognised it!

This encouraged me to try and find my journal from that time, with all my other quilt photos in. I haven't found it yet, BUT I did dig out an unfinished log cabin quilt that I have carried around for years, and not finished.

The colours are a bit more challenging than I remember, but I am inspired to finish it.
I think I stopped sewing because I thought it was taking up time I should have been writing poetry - or perhaps it was because I moved to a larger house and the floor space in the sitting room was too large!