A Couple of Quilts

Hey Everyone!

These aren't recent finishes but ones I realized that I'd never photographed.

First up, we have a scrappy Log Cabin quilt.  The measurements are all approximate because it's been washed quite a few times. :-)

Set 6 blocks x 7 blocks.  Finished block size:  7½".  Red border is 3" and blue border is 5½".  This was machine pieced and hand quilted.

The hand-quilting was done in vertical rows using a stencil.  I don't know what the name of the stencil is as I lent it to my sister and she still has it.  It's a floral-vine type design.

The second quilt is a happy block.  That's not an official name, it's just what the group I was in called it.  I did this one as an exchange* with an online group I used to belong to.  My theme was blue & white, so the centers are all blue fabrics and the borders are all white fabrics.  Looking at the quilt that might not seem to hold true - when I washed it, one of the blues bled and some of the whites soaked it up.  :-)

There are 2 different sized blocks in this quilt.  It is laid out with a 5 block x 6 block center then bordered with the larger blocks.  I used sashing and cornerstones to make the overall dimensions of the smaller blocks fit inside the larger border blocks.

My sister and I both quilted this on a Handi-quilter longarm that I had rented time on at a now-closed shop in Olympia, WA.  I'd do one block, then she'd do one, and so on.  It was great because it meant neither one of us was standing for too long and we finished this top and another within 6 hours.  It was the first quilt either of us longarmed, so I didn't care what it looked like, I just wanted us to get comfortable with the machine.  We went old-school on it - as in grade school.  Like those random drawings we used to do and then fill in the spaces with different colors.

I decided to keep the binding scrappy as well.

 * Here's how the exchange worked:

For the quilt's center blocks, I sent (6) 3½" squares (blue) to the people in my group.  Usually 5 other people.  They kept one of the squares for themselves.  They put 2½" borders (white) on my squares and mailed them back to me.  The color choices were only for my quilt.  The other members sent random colored squares to me that I put borders on and mailed them back.

For the bigger, border blocks, the centers (blue) were 6" and also got 2½" borders added.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy