What am I working on?

I had a bag of 1.5" strips of Kaffe fabric that I had cut about 2 years ago. I had the 3" flower squares that I cut out of the waste area on the Big Blooms fabric so I started making some smaller blocks. I laid one of the large blocks on the table so you can see the comparison of size. The large ones finish at 16" and the small ones will be 10.5".I decided to sort all of my Kaffe fabric into stacks of the same print in all the colors that I have. I also filled in a couple more index cards. That took all morning yesterday.

Then in the afternoon my dad had an eye appointment for a regular check up, 2 hours. Later in the afternoon some cousins were going to be nearby so they stopped to visit and asked us out to eat and we were joined by a couple more cousins at the restaurant. My dad's birthday is 8 days away so it was an early celebration for them to be with him. He is the last uncle they have left.

To unwind after I got home I started the small log cabin blocks. I need to cut some more light strips before I can finish them.

Final layout?

I think this may be the final layout. I have a couple flowers that are alike near each other but I think that I wouldn't know the difference if I did any more changing so it probably isn't worth the effort. I worked some more on my card file. A couple people asked how I attached the fabric to the cards. I was ready to change the needle on my sewing machine, so I just went ahead and sewed the swatches onto the cards with the old needle. I bought the index cards at W*l-M*rt and they are really thin compared to others I have purchased so it wasn't hard to sew through.

Card file

The only sewing I did yesterday was on index cards. I decided to make a file of all of the Kaffe fabrics that I have. In his books he is always referencing the fabrics he used in the quilts by number only. I always like to see which ones he used even if I don't use the same ones when I make the quilts. I have a good start with all of the scraps that I had on my cutting table and in 2 small bags. I am going to do some more cutting for another quilt so I should be able to get most of them catalogued.

I did rearrange the blocks on the quilt but I'm still not done so I'll show the final arrangement soon. Today is the sewing circle at church again so I won't get much done until evening.

24 blocks done

I finished sewing the blocks last night. I am stopping at 24 blocks because with a small border it will be perfect for the twin bed in my guest bedroom. I still need to rearrange the blocks because it is heavy with blue in some areas and heavy with red in others. My main objective is to not have 2 of the same flower next to each other.The cutting took 2 days and the sewing 4 days, but not all day every day. I rarely get in more than 4 hours quilting time in a day and sometimes only 2 hours.
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The private lesson went well yesterday. The lady who owns the store and I are trading off teaching him, whichever one is free on a day he can come. He switched to a rotary cutter from scissors and he was pleased with the speedier cutting time.

Still making blocks

I finished 2 more blocks and the other 8 are still partial blocks. I need to cut some more dark strips before I can finish.For those who are wondering (and those who have asked), my daughter loved her birthday quilt and it looks great in her bedroom.
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This morning I am doing a private class at the sewing machine store for a young gentleman who wants to learn to sew so he can make Civil War uniforms for the guys who do the re-enactments of the war. I gave him a lesson last Saturday and he is just getting used to a machine and seam allowances. He set in a 2 piece sleeve last week so he learned about easing. He was using felt for his first project and he has a new garment cut out for this week. I hope it is a woven fabric this time.

14 blocks finished

I had to put this up on a double design wall because it is 64" square already. The one in the book is 96" square. Since that isn't large enough for a king bed, but the wrong shape for a queen bed I may just make 24 blocks for a 64" x 96" top that I can add a border to and it will be perfect for a twin bed. I added the yellow/orange spools print into the light side for a little warmth amongst the cool greens.
I taught a finishing class yesterday with 6 students with a wide variety of projects. One lady brought the pieces below which we played with until we were happy with a design. She had started making 9 patches (top left and bottom right) but decided she didn't like them and changed to 4 patches. She had already cut some green rectangles to fill in but wasn't happy with any layout she tried. I think it turned out pretty neat and she was happy with it too.

I wasn't quick enough to get pictures of 3 others before they were taken off the design wall to sew together. They asked for a finishing class every month so we have set one up for the first week in Dec.

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I rarely go to my blog to read the comments because I get them automatically in my email. When I posted this one I glanced at the number of comments yesterday I realized I had only received about half of them in my email. I usually try to reply to the ones with email addresses so I really missed a bunch today. I'm wondering if this is a Google problem or my email server.

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Several people mentioned the fabric choices and how hard it is to throw things together in a block that don't seem to go together, but the one thing that is most important is not color or print but what value it is. If you have 2 distinct values you will have success with log cabin. That is one of the reasons that log cabin is such a good scrap quilt, dividing all of your fabrics into 2 values and throwing out the prints that are high constrast with both light and dark in them because they don't fit on either side.

Wow they are big!!

These 4 blocks together measure 32.5" square. That's huge. I guess I should have known the size of the block when the longest strip was 16.5" but it still surprised me. 4 down 32 to go. These are a couple of the layouts in the whole quilt, the one above the center and this one below what the diagonal lines will look like in the barnraising.

I thought each block was rather ugly when I got them done, but once I saw them on the computer screen I didn't think they looked so bad.

I have a bunch more partial blocks made too but now I need to cut some more pieces before I can continue.