My sister Janet lives in California and has been bitten by the quilting bug. She calls me several times a week (usually FaceTime) with all sorts of questions and conundrums. I convinced her to buy a new Bernina sewing machine so she could get her 1/4" seams right and have the experience of sewing with a decent machine! She loves quilting and spends as much on fabric and patterns monthly as I do in one year! And she loves it. Never seems to get enough. Here is a log cabin quilt center she just finished. The recipient requested a "white" quilt. Using some soft gray makes this very lovely. The blocks are 10". There's a LOT of piecing going on here. She was exhausted after that and is convinced she won't make another log cabin in awhile. Me? I keep making them. Janet's Log Cabin quilt center I found a postcard I made about 10 years ago and decided it was time to send it off. This time to my little grandkids who live in Maryland. This definitely i...

Yes, more Log Cabin quilts. Today I'm featuring the Greek Key Spiral Log Cabin blocks. They are really the Courthouse Steps version of Log Cabin with the last log added in a magical position. Very easy and it's a "fool the eye" block that I enjoy making. As you can see, I have two lap sized quilts made from them. These are 8" blocks that were pieced the old fashioned way - using no specialty ruler. Just precise piecing. I call this Red Hot Logs . Red Hot Logs : 42" x 50"  Here is a photo of four of the blocks. Four Greek Key Blocks  And 12 of the 20 blocks: 12 blocks of the 20 total I pulled out my Kaffe Fassett fabrics and proceeded to whip up another version of the Greek Keys . I got in trouble with the center four pink/pink blocks because I wasn't sure how to arrange everything. But it all worked out. This was quilted by Lee Taylor in the Sew Lovelee Quilt Shop in southern Virginia. Rainbow Log Cabins Both versions are ...

You didn't think I was done, did you? I made a list of my log cabin quilt creations and it keeps growing. Remember, I've been doing this for 25+ years and I have all my original files from when they were published in various magazines. These were made using some Benartex fabrics called Dwellings. These pot holders are made from panels that look like Log Cabins. Cut, stitch, bind, done! Log Cabin Pot Holders This is the fabric on the back: Pot Holders backing fabric I submitted these to Modern Patchwork Magazine and they said, "Sure. But you need to remake them with actual fabric strips!" OK. Pay me and I'll do it. (I did; they did.) Log Cabin Potholders that appeared in Modern Patchwork Magazine 2014  How the pot holders appeared in the magazine: Single pot holder I rewrote the entire pattern (9 page pdf) with a color cover page and color throughout with four full size foundations for making these. One of my daughters promptly snatched...

I dug into my Quilt Vault and pulled out two more scrap buster quilts. These were made almost 20 years ago from the bags of strips and leftover pieces of fabric I couldn't bear to throw out. The first one is Rocky Road to Kansas , a vintage pattern. I cut dozens of 6-1/2" squares of newsprint and began piecing randomly on them for a foundation. I trimmed them and spent about 2 years mindlessly stitching with no plan in mind. I saw a vintage Rocky Road to Kansas quilt and realized my string pieced squares could now find a home! This quilt has 17" blocks for an 80" x 80" bed sized quilt. Very scrappy! This appeared in Quilt Magazine, October 2000. Rocky Road to Kansas The method for cutting those string pieced kaleidoscope units was easy - any Kaleidoscope ruler will do (I include full size templates in my pattern). But I had some lovely leftovers from those leftovers (how can that be?) I could see that they were usable and put my thinking cap on and the...

I just got home from teaching at Quilt Odyssey (Hershey, PA) and my most popular class was the Modern Vortex. 25 students had such a great time and I loved seeing all the different fabric combinations. In case you don't know what my Modern Vortex looks like, here it is. I created this in 2012 as the result of a blog hop challenge. Modern Vortex Mine has been imitated by some other "famous" quilters, but my inspiration came from the vintage Vortex quilt that I'm sure you've seen: Original Vortex quilt, c1910 How about some other versions? I've taught this workshop over 2 dozen times and my students have given me some great ideas. How about multi-colors? Jane H. of Centreville, MD took my workshop a few years ago and decided to take the plunge and use more than 2 colors. She worked out the cutting and color placement. What do you think? Multi-colored Vortex  I decided to follow suit and now my pattern includes this version. Here are my sa...

I love coming into contact with a solid set of "blenders" that have a lot of possibilities. Such it is with Bedrock from Windham Fabrics. These were released in January and I assume they will be with us for a long time. We are always looking for solids that aren't solids, if you know what I mean! I have been working on my 2020 Quilting Calendar (yes, I am!) and designed a simple carrot block. Carrots? Really? Yes! Let me show you! Windham sent me all 70 of the Bedrock skus, each being a fat quarter. You can't do a lot with fat quarters, or can you? Remember my quilt from last week made using fat quarters of Birdsong ? That big quilt was made using ONLY fat quarters. Even the border. I selected 3 fabrics of Bedrock for my simple block. Of course there's a real orangey - orange! I decided to make a version of my Eat Your Carrots pattern. Fabrics selected for my Carrot blocks  I printed my carrot pattern (for foundation piecing) five times. It will f...

Last week I shared about some mini hearts made using Jewel papers and English Paper Piecing (EPP). These are some samples for my upcoming EPP class in July. I'm going to stack the hearts and they will nestle into one another. Stacked Hearts made using jewel papers and a variety of Windham Fabrics I received a card in the mail the other day with Stacked Hearts. Cute, huh? And then I got to thinking: Hmmm. Stacked Hearts. Stacked Hearts. I think I have a quilt by that name! This is one of my appliqué patterns that I shared a few months ago as a Valentine's Day blog post. I used the Uncorked Collection by Windham Fabrics. Stacked Hearts using the Uncorked Collection by Windham Here's the range of fabrics in a set of fat quarters. Quite luscious, don't you think? I've already pulled the pinks for some EPP hearts. Fat quarters of Uncorked by Windham And, yes, for some reason I cut a square from each of those fat quarters. I think t...