chaos ensues

As you can see, quilting has overtaken my life and my house. My idle knitting hands dug out boxes and boxes of fabric I inherited from my mother in 1991. As far as I can remember, she only ended up completing one quilt before she died. It was for me, a gorgeous black & white Irish chain (I was really into 2 Tone ska at the time and obsessed with b&w checks - so sweet of her to use this as inspiration). I never use it for fear of ruining it. But when our family went on a road trip after my mom died, my dad used it to make a bed in the back of the van for us kids. When I discovered this several hours into the trip, I had a complete meltdown, sure it would be destroyed by my two brothers over the course of the two week camping trip. Under my careful watch, it survived and now enjoys a quiet life in the linen closet.

my mom's 2 Tone Irish Chain

Anyhoo...my mom left behind 30 scrappy log cabin squares and enough fabric to keep busy several generations to come. She didn't leave any patterns so I have no idea what she intended to make, which makes me little sad. And I hardly know what I'm doing, having only made simple tied quilts and two pieced baby quilts to this point. But the pre-made squares were a good starting point. I don't know the story behind these squares, but they were an absolute mess - weirdo color combinations, the strips all catawampous, the squares all different sizes (I found this strange because my b&w quilt, by extreme contrast, was so precisely made). It was impossible to piece it together without first partially dissembling several squares and adding new fabric in to make them a uniform size. I wish I had taken pictures along the way. Six squares were so small, I couldn't even use them in the quilt. Then only by accident did I properly arrange the squares in the Straight Furrows style.

accidental straight furrows - yea!

My mom had sewn together four of the blocks and I had to guess from there which order to put the rest in. After I sewed it all together, I noticed this cool diagonal effect of light and dark fabric, then learned that part of designing a log cabin quilt is selecting a block variation. This was very satisfying and I took the picture above to commemorate the moment.

all basted & ready to quilt

After figuring out where to buy batting and quilting supplies in Zurich (not an easy task for my pidgeon German), I settled into several nights of endless basting (yuck). Now I'm hand-quilting, which may take the next 100 years, and contemplating why anyone does this and why I continue to do it. Do I even like quilting? This is awful. I quilt while I watch TV and at my current pace, it takes approximately four TIVO'd shows to finish one square. I've finished two, so twenty-two more to go. Meanwhile...