Log Cabin Race?

A week or two ago my dear husband surprised me with a Moda scrap bag! Well, I snuck it into his Amazon order, but he ordered it! And very sweetly presented it to me, what a nice surprise! So since then I was trying to see if there was something to be made without adding other fabrics. Lucky for me, the “scraps” were all from the same line of fabric! Most of the pieces were close to 32″ long and the width was about 1 3/4″ – 2 1/2″, so everything was very user friendly.

Yes, this is one of the blocks I made. But before I could do ANYTHING the selvages had to be trimmed off. This was actually a wee bit tricky. When one folds the strip to trim the selvage away, the strip will not lie flat, thus creating stubborn, nasty strips. No really, it was ridiculous.

I don’t know if you can see what I mean here. Notice the curve that leans? Well, I had a thought…about clipping curves at this moment. So I tried it. 

Would you lookit that!? Maybe this is just something everyone knows, but it was one of those {angels singing} moments for me! Those few clips made the strips lie down flat and behave! Ta daaa.

I did keep some of the selvages, just in case I make a quilt out of them someday. The little umbrellas are so adorable. And my strips are pretty darn cute too.

So I decided to use my favorite fabric, with the little fishes in all colors, for the centers of my log cabin blocks. Then I added the strips until I had three light and three dark. Whatever size the block ended up as would work, because I was really making this up as I went along.

After six blocks I really felt done making them, so I stopped. Even though they ended up close to the same size, they didn’t fit together just like that (snap fingers here). I had to add a strip, and trim a strip to make them all work together. And even after that, together they were not a normal size for a quilt. So I sewed my leftover strips all together, on the diagonal, and added them to the long sides.

I started with the most narrow strips, which added a few inches to the sideways measurements. I moved on to the middle sized leftovers, attaching them diagonally too, then on the sides. Finally the quilt was looking more like it could be a baby quilt.

I thought it could use a few more strips so I sewed the last group together. At this point I think I decided it needed some long strips on the “other” sides.

So this is it, done. At least as done as it’s going to be for now. 

A close up of the bunched up quilt and the strips. I called this a Log Cabin Race only because of the diagonal attaching of the strips and the willy nilly way I went about connecting things. Maybe there is another name for this, like “what a mess, get organized already” but that’s kind of long and goofy.

Once I finished with that I still had a few minutes to do something….and I noticed some blocks that were leftover from this project.

The leftovers have hearts and flowers and are not quarter square triangles. So I trimmed them up!

There aren’t really enough to make a quilt, not even a baby quilt, unless I put on a humongous border. So I’m thinking table runner or some small placemats. I laid them out like this.

Kind of a flying geese look. I didn’t sew them together, as I’m just not sure what I’m doing with them yet. They’re trimmed to 4 1/2″ so they are ready to be used! But now that it’s June, I’ve got some other sewing I need to get to. Summer birthdays, auction in September and any other reason I can find to put myself in front of the machine.

Have a nice weekend, friends.

LL