Thursday, October 15, 2015

Throwback Thursday--Floral Log Cabin

My quilt submission for this week's Throwback Thursday post is the first bed-sized quilt I made by myself. It was started in a quilting class in October, 1995 and finished in August, 1997.

The pattern for our class was called Floral Blocks and Logs. I think it was meant to be a colorwash-type design. The pattern has 36 blocks, making a quilt that measures 63" square. Here is the cover of the pattern. 



I was a very new quilter when I took this class and really didn't have much of a stash of fabrics (boy, has that fact changed!) I vaguely remember going to Joann Fabrics and filling up a whole cart, maybe two, with bolts of fabric and getting 1/8 or 1/4 yard pieces of each one. I'm sure the people working there hated me that day!

During and soon after the class, I made 24 blocks for this quilt, then stashed the whole collection away in a box, probably because I didn't know how big I wanted to go with it. Nearly two years later, I pulled out the blocks and the fabric strips and made 40 more blocks. I quickly discovered the fun of playing with log cabin blocks in different settings. Of course, this was long before digital cameras came along, so I used a Polaroid camera to try different layouts of my blocks. Here are some of the possible layouts that I considered.




Floral Log Cabin--final layout of center

The center of my quilt is 64 blocks set 8x8 and measuring 84" square. To make the quilt big enough for my bed, I designed my own border for the quilt. I especially like the checkerboard--that's a lot of 1" squares! The next couple of photos give a better idea of the colors in the quilt than the scanned Polaroids in the previous photos.


Floral Log Cabin--center of quilt

Floral Log Cabin--border
This is the only large quilt I have ever quilted myself. I did it on my domestic machine, all stitch-in-the-ditch. The back of the quilt is plain muslin, and it feels like the batting might be polyester. I like to change around the quilts on our beds as the seasons change, and decided this quilt would be a good one to use now that it is starting to feel like fall. It was very difficult to get a photo of the whole quilt on the bed, but this was the best I could manage.



Check out other Throwback Thursday quilt posts at Krista Quilts. Even better, add your own post to the link-up. We'd love to see your quilts from the past! 


Julie in GA

4 comments:

  1. It looks so much different than the Polaroids show. Definitely worth finishing!

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  2. Wow! Love it! I'd like to make one after seeing yours.

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  3. Wow! Love it! I'd like to make one after seeing yours.

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  4. Very pretty. Love all the different fabrics in this quilt. I had to laugh about your JoAnn's fabric shopping trip for the class. I had to do something similar when I took a class that made a scrap quilt before I had any stash. That has definitely changed for me too.

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