Saturday, December 12, 2009

My Christmas Log Cabin Quilt

This is Holly and Ivy, aka the Christmas Log Cabin quilt.

I made this a few years ago, thinking it would deplete my overly extensive stash of Christmas fabric. Ha! Despite being about 80" by 60" it hardly made a dent in the red-and-green stash. I've since learned this is often the case; whenever I make a quilt from stash, it doesn't use nearly as much fabric as I think it will.

I've made several log cabin quilts, using two different construction techniques. For method A, one cuts all the logs before sewing, cutting each the exact length to fit its position in the block. Method B might be called sew-and-whack; you cut strips of fabric the correct width and sew them to the block, trimming each to fit before adding the next log. I think Eleanor Burns Quilt-In-A-Day log cabin uses this latter method. I generally prefer this method but have found you have to measure and trim very accurately after sewing each strip on or your blocks can come out all different sizes. And different sizes makes putting them together in the quilt top very tricky!

Here's a close-up that shows the quilting. This was one of the first quilts I had quilted by a professional long-armer. She used a holly leaves and vine pantograph with red and green varigated thread. I think it is very effective for this quilt.
Holly and Ivy gets out of storage and into our living space for about a month each year. It is currently over the back of a chair in the living room, waiting for me to curl up with a book. Maybe later this afternoon.

1 comment:

  1. That’s great! I just tried it out and already found a new domain. It’s a really quick search. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

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