The Quilt Files, Episode 5

Well, I promised last time I would present the first quilting project I ever started; it also happens to be the one I most recently finished. And here it is, what I call my Sea-and-Sky Log Cabin:


You may wonder why it took me so long to finish this quilt; I figure it took between six and seven years from start to finish. The top isn't very complicated at all, which is why I chose it for my first project. It's a simple log cabin with a large central square that's surrounded by three "logs." There are extra borders between the squares, yes, but those aren't very hard at all. (Unless you measure them short before you start sewing, or put them on backwards and have to pick the seam out ... but I didn't make any of those mistakes. At least not with this quilt.) No, what took so long was the quilting. I decided to quilt this piece by hand, since I thought doing it by machine on such a big piece (queen size) might be too ambitious for my first project. I stitched in the ditch for the squares, and stitched diagonals in the big borders. As you can imagine, this is a pretty time-consuming task, and something difficult to do during the summer. Who wants a big heavy quilt sitting on their lap while they're stitching it? I sure didn't. So I put it away during summers, and occasionally remembered it during the winters, and finally finished it this fall. You can't really see all the quilting from the front, but on the back you can see it to its best advantage.

I'm pretty pleased with how this quilt turned out. I think it's beautiful, although I'm not sure where I'm going to display it. In the meantime, it will hang on my quilt rack in my sewing room, although Callie has her own opinion about the proper use of quilts, as you can see in the photo. Cats don't care about the details. Forget the fabric selection and quilting technique; if it's soft and comfy, it's a success!