Tara's Log Cabin Birthday Quilt

Quite possibly, my favorite part about this quilt is the binding, so I thought I would start with a picture of the fabric I used for that. It turns out that stripes make fantastic binding. I'm sure lots of people already knew this, yet I was not one of them until now.

This quilt is for my sister's birthday. Happy birthday, Tara! It's crimson and cream-ish, right?

This quilt just happens to be #1 in the Year of the Log Cabin Quilts. I don't think I've shared here how this craziness began so ...

I posted this on Facebook in December, declaring 2014 to be the Year of the Log Cabin Quilt, then I shared it here on Twitter, and of course added Pinterest to the fun as well.

After getting so many responses I actually made a calendar and intend to send a little something to everyone who responded. I'll let you know how that goes. With two finishes in January, I'm feeling pretty good about myself, even if one was a baby quilt.

This quilt is #1 in the Log Cabin series because I started it first. I did take a little break to make Cody's quilt in the middle but thanks to the truly exceptional winter we've had here in northern Indiana, I was able to get some extra quilting time in this week (snow days, ya know).

I decided to invest in some tools for myself since I've got a rather serious year of quilting ahead of me. I bought the quilt clips to keep the excess rolled up while quilting. I'm kind of ambivalent about the clips so far. Those gloves in the picture, though? Those are my new favorite thing. They are grippy over the entire surface of the glove and help you to hold on to the quilt while you are moving it around during quilting. Honestly, I was amazed at the difference it made while I was working on this project. I can't imagine trying to quilt without them now. I felt very much more in control as I was moving the quilt around.

Here's the binding in action as it's being sewn on to the quilt.

And the binding at the end. Seriously, I love the binding. It added a lot to this quilt.

I did free motion quilting on this quilt (aka free style, free range). In case you're not familiar, that means that you lower the feed dogs on your sewing machine, switch out your machine's foot to a darning foot, or a free motion foot, and you move the quilt around to make the design you want on your fabric. As you can see, I got a little fancy with the heart up there. There were just a couple of solid fabric centers in this quilt, so I threw in a couple of more deliberate designs just for fun, as opposed to the all over meander on the rest of the quilt.

So here's the finished quilt. It finished at about 48" x 64". 

And the back. I've not yet added a label ... I also really loved the way that floral fabric on the bottom looked on the back. Click the image to see it larger.

And doesn't it look good on the couch in my living room (below)? Good news, I've got another one quite similar for myself so I can give this one away without missing it too much. (And I STILL have enough of this fabric left to make at least one more quilt. Good grief).

So that's two finishes in the Year of the Log Cabin Quilt series. I'm impressed even if nobody else is. Things I'm looking forward to with this series of projects are:

*adding borders

*more intricate designs

*designs on point

*attempting a larger quilt on my home machine?

*more baby quilts