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.
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.
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.
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...
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