Happy Valentine's Day!

This is a quilt I made for my husband for Valentine's Day in 1996 (I think). In the early days, I evidently wasn't very brave in my pattern choices. Here is ANOTHER log cabin:

Around this time, my mom got a fancy new embroidery sewing machine, so I embroidered the 4 corners.

This quilt is tied with white yarn, and the binding is just a self binding turned over the back.. At my husband's request, this quilt had a polar fleece back....I learned that a stretchy back puts stress on some of the seams, and this quilt has some repair work to be done. :(

My quilts DO get better and more interesting eventually...I promise! :)

In Honor of the Super Bowl

Today's post is in honor of the Super Bowl. Great exciting game last night, right?

This quilt was made while I was living in Seattle, WA....and it is the colors of the New England Patriots!

I think the quilt was made in 1994 (which saw the Dallas Cowboys beat the Buffalo Bills for the 2nd year in a row and a Rockin' Country Music halftime). I made it for my husband's 25th birthday....in hindsight, maybe it should have been silver?

I have no idea what the pattern is called. I saw the picture and got out my pencil and graph paper and sketched it out. This quilt embodies my style of quilting, which I have dubbed "Scrappy with a Theme". In this style, I pick a few colors (or a theme) and then put a huge variety of fabrics that fit within those colors. I love collecting fabrics...usually a quarter-yard at a time, or a layer cake (collection of a variety of 10-inch squares). One of my favorite stages of making a quilt is the Fabric Collecting....going through my stash and pulling out all the fabrics that I will use. It's not uncommon for me to have over a hundred different fabrics in a quilt!

Back in these days, we had no money. Fabrics were not high quality (notice the fading), and were often cut from clothes-sewing scraps and/or cut from outdated clothing. Also, I used sheets a lot for the large pieces. In this quilt, the red bricks on the front, as well as the back are from a sheet.

I actually did get brave enough to machine-quilt this on my little sewing machine. I stitched along the larger squares that grew out from the middle. The binding is a self-binding from the sheet on the back.

I had forgotten how much I like this pattern, and wouldn't mind making it again with better-quality fabrics.....you know, when I finish all the other quilts I have in the plans and in the works!

The One that Started them All

Log Cabin - 1992

This is the first quilt I ever pieced (I think). My sister, Christine Woodrome, had taught me this new technique with rotary cutters and rulers! Revolutionary! I think she made hers navy blue and pink.

I made mine green and mauve to match the sheets we had chosen for our bed. I also used fabric from the sheets for the border. I look at it now and think….hideodeous colors! I remember hearing that traditional Log Cabin quilts had a red square in the center to represent the heart of the home, so I picked a darker mauve to represent my “heart”.

For the back, I used a dark green flannel sheet. We were living in Seattle at the time, so warmth was appreciated. I didn’t quite know how to finish it. I didn’t want to quilt the whole big thing on my sewing machine, and I didn’t want to tie it, so I think I did intermittent “button sew-on stitch” tacks, and then machine-quilted the borders. It is a self-binding with the fabric on the front.

A couple of times, as we’ve moved or cleaned out, I’ve been tempted to toss this, but I’m glad that my husband insisted that we keep it, if only for moving furniture!