Not Wooly, or Even Having to do with Yarn at All

Over the weekend, I sat down to work on the quilt top that I drug out of my stash closet a few weeks ago. I had originally planned on having 8 rows of 10 blocks each, but that was before we got The Big Mattress. Luckily, I had 9 extra blocks left over so I sat down at the sewing machine and made another block so I could add another row to the bottom of the quilt.

Then it was time to sew the rows (the original 8 were already together in rows) together. Big, long strips of blocks were joined, ironed and made bigger, long strips, then these were joined and after not too long of a time (but a bobbin and a half of thread - sewing together a quilt top eats some serious thread), I had all the blocks together! A final ironing and I was ready to see how much I need to add in borders. (Must cover The Big Mattress after all.)

Monday is Clean Sheet Day around here, so while the bed was stripped I carried the top in and spread it on The Big Mattress to get some measurements. I love the way it looks already, but there must be borders! Ramius even came to help, or at least walk around on the quilt top the way cats like to do. The next step will be to check what kind of yardage I have left from the blocks and figure out my borders.

I realized as I was typing this that I hadn't mentioned any real details about the quilt top, and since this really isn't "officially" a quilt blog (although I guess the "...and my crazy life." header leaves my options pretty wide open), there might be some of you out there that don't know anything about quilts. This is a Log Cabin quilt (you can see a single block at the top of this blog post), which is one of my favorite designs for a couple of reasons. The Log Cabin was the first quilt I ever made, when I took a class in Waco, Texas (the shop is no longer in business) after Mickael and I were married. Also, the Log Cabin block, while using lots of fabrics, has a light side and a dark side if you divide it diagonally. This gives you lots of different ways to arrange the blocks, by simply turning them different directions. The layout I used has a star in the center and then radiates out from that in what's called the Barn Raising layout. My Log Cabin blocks have dark red centers - the red symbolizes the hearth of the home. Yellow is also a popular, traditional center pattern, symbolizing a candle in the window. There is a myth that Log Cabin quilts with black centers were used to mark stops on the Underground Railroad, and while it's a charming story, quilt historians have been unable to find quilts with black centers (or record of such things) dating from the correct time period.