Joining in once again over at Quilty Girl (and new Grandma) Alycia's for this week's "Finished or Not Friday" linkup!
I present my finally finished "Rainbow Scrappy Log Cabin":
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I say finally because this was one of the six (!) projects I started back in 2021 when I decided to finally dive into Angela's (of the So Scrappy blog) Rainbow Scrap Quilt Challenge. This pattern is the one that comes with Accuquilt's Log Cabin die although they call it the "Scrappy Star Log Cabin". I wonder if that's because Pam Heller, Accuquilt's Cutting Expert always cites this die as a good one to use to cut up your scraps.
After learning about and following the RSC, I immediately envisioned using the pattern for the challenge since that would absolve me from having to choose a colorway for the quilt. Use all the colors in the rainbow and you don't have to pick a specific color direction!
Funny thing was that of all the projects I started that year, I wound up only picking and die cutting the fabrics for this during the challenge since I realized that I wanted to have all of the fabrics gathered and complementary before starting to piece the blocks. As a result the actual block sewing didn't start until 2022. However as usual with a lot of projects on my plate, I only made maybe three blocks that year and then this got lost in the project shuffle.
It got revived again in 2023 when the American Quilters Society teamed up with Accuquilt and held a quilt along for this pattern. I got the top done but then the next usual question/issue was how to quilt it and so it sat again. In 2024 Angela Walters held another of her free motion quilting challenges called "How Do I Quilt It?" that covered stitch patterns for Snowball, Chevron, Log Cabin and Curved blocks and Applique borders. That year I also had a Snowball block quilt that I was looking for inspiration for the quilting. I did get that one done but unlike another time when I got two quilts finished because of one of her challenges, this time I wasn't sure any of her approaches worked for me. So once again it sat!
Then this year the guild I belong to long distance with my mother-in-law announced that their challenge project for this year would be making a log cabin quilt! Perfect! Ever since owning the die I've longed to make a lot of Log Cabin quilts so pulled out all the ideas that I had for them. However, in the end since this one was already pieced and ready to go and only needed to be quilted, it became the one to get done! Another push was having a deadline since finished quilts were to be presented at the guild's June meeting.
My expectation was to get it quilted by the end of May so I could mail it down to North Carolina in plenty of time. Well you know what they say about the best laid plans: it still took me until last week to decide on what wound up being a very simple quilting plan: evenly spaced straight lines across some of the major directions that the piecing followed. Even then such simple quilting, done free-motion with a ruler, took me a little longer than I expected. Then I decided after the quilting was done to add a flange accent to the binding I had planned to do using the outer border fabric. I was able to once again use up some of the leftover Log Cabin strips that I had and sewed them together to form the accent strip to create the effect.
It's a subtle touch next to the busy border fabric but I like it! Even better, a flange binding is my favorite kind of binding: completely applied by machine!
I finished it up on Sunday and mailed it out on Monday. Unfortunately I'm still on pins and needles as it was estimated to arrive to her by yesterday. It was in NC by that time but as of today is still listed as having been transferred to the postal distribution center in the next big town. I really hope it gets to her by tonight otherwise after all of this effort, it might still not be part of the guild presentation tomorrow!
Well at least I can say I've checked off another UFO on my master to-do list --- even if it's not the one I was supposed to be working on this month LOL! This month the number that was pulled on this year's UFO Challenge List (I'm following The Quilted Forest's picks on YouTube) was #1 which on my list is my "Scrap Vortex" quilt.
That's another one that's only waiting to be quilted but has stumped me up until now. Mostly because I have some vague yet also specific ideas on what I'd like to do on it but haven't quite worked out how to make that happen. Hopefully this finish will inspire me to get that one done too. Not to mention I still have to finish the quilting on March's UFO pick, still layer and quilt April's and cut the "Newfo" picked from the list for May. Never a dull moment in my quilt world!
And it's also never a dull moment in the worlds of the quilters that gather at Alycia's each week for "Finished Or Not Friday"! So head on over there to see what everyone has worked on this past week whether it was finished or not!
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