What I’m working on....

For the last few years most of my sewing and quilting time has been taken up almost exclusively with hand pieced projects. While doing La Passacaglia I fell in love with the process of English Paper Piecing and it took over all my quilting time. But in the last few months my love of machine piecing has been renewed.
Back at the end of November I started working on a Log Cabin quilt designed by Judy Martin. It is in her book Extraordinary Log Cabins. Its name is Pioneer Log Cabin. The picture here shows it without the borders on yet. I was in such a hurry to get it loaded onto the long arm that I didn’t take pictures of it with the borders. And of course there is the problem of finding floor space big enough to take a picture of the whole thing. Once the quilting is done I’ll take it outside and spread it out on the snow for a glamour shot.



I loved the process of piecing this quilt so much that the entire quilt was pieced within the space of 2 months. It measures 96 x 96 inches. I’m quilting it with very simple and classic Baptist Fans which compliment the curves in the pricing quite well.

Last week I was doing some blog surfing and came across a block of the month from A Quilting Life. I thought it looked and sounded like a fun thing to do. It’s been ages and ages since I’ve done a block of the month. She is offering the blocks in three different sizes; 6 inch, 12 inch or 18 inch. Well that got me to thinking about all of the different blocks that have been started and abandoned over the years, some of which are 12 inch and others which are 12 inch. I went digging in the black hole in the back of the furnace room and found them - lots of them. So rather than follow along month by month with the Quilting Life BOM I’ve used it as a spring board to use up these odds and ends of blocks.  This is her January block, done in the 18 inch size along with a 12 inch and 2 6 inch blocks of my own.



Once I established that I liked the look and the concept I dove into my EQ8 computer program to find more blocks that would look good in the 18 inch format. By the end of Friday evening I had the first row done. The lighting isn’t the greatest in the next photo.



On Saturday I worked on a couple of other 18 inch blocks for the next row.



This project should go fairly quickly since I have a lot of the blocks already done.

I’m going to link up to  Monday Making and Design Wall Monday before getting back to more 18 inch blocks for this quilt. It is going to be so much fun to see this one grow.