Log Cabin | Quilt Obsession

Wednesday I decided to try machine stitching one of the little 5″ shabby chic log cabin blocks and was pleasantly surprised at just how well it turned out. In fact, I think it looks better than the one I had previously hand-pieced.

The back looks wonderful too. The one thing that I can’t get used to is the amount of pressing that machine piecing entails. When I hand piece, I usually leave the pressing until the end but with this I found I was jumping up to press after each little log was added.

When I was cleaning up my stitching area I found these 2.5″ half-square triangles I had made quite a while ago using Inklingo. For these, I had printed the triangles on the back of the cream fabric and then stitched on the lines. When cut apart, I had perfect HSTs but that was as far as I went. I decided to try joining them into a couple of rows using the machine and was again pleasantly surprised. This time I decided to try stitching without all the pinning and, while a few of my joins aren’t perfect, it’s good enough for a small doll’s quilt — and a great learning tool for me. I’ll keep making the rows and joining them until I’ve used up all the HSTs and then will decide what, if any, border to add.

One of the things I found at the Creativ Festival was the Grace Company TrueCut My Comfort Cutter. I’m really impressed with this cutter — it’s very comfortable to hold and use and doesn’t set up any pain in my wrist or hand. The ruler is interesting as it has a slight lip on which part of the cutter rests and rides along as you cut and makes it easy to get perfect cuts. The best part to me is that the rotary cutter takes any blades on the market. I hadn’t even heard of this cutter before seeing it at the Festival.

Smudge loves to lie at Mr. Q.O.’s feet. Wednesday night he was having quite a dream and was growling in his sleep. That’s the first time we’ve ever heard him growl while dreaming. Normally he only growls if he sees a dog at the vet’s office.

32 blocks were finished yesterday. I probably could have stitched more but the lighting was less than wonderful and my eyes were getting a bit tired. There’s something about stitching these little Drunkard’s Path units that is absolutely irresistible to me.

The back of one of the blocks:

When we got home, I pressed the ones I had stitched and started cutting out more of them. If I keep stitching at this rate, I’ll have all the little blocks made in no time at all and then can start putting the groupings of 4 blocks together.

Then I was thrilled to find out that there’s now an Inklingo Log Cabin collection. I’ve never wanted to make a log cabin quilt but I think that may have been partially because of the amount of precision rotary cutting that would be involved. So now I’m contemplating a few ideas for little quilts. But more than that, I’m thrilled to have the variety of lengths of 1″ rectangles to play with from 1″ x 2″ all the way up to 1″ x 10″. There are a lot of design possibilities involved with those! I’ve already got an idea for a stitching book which I hope to get done this weekend.

Thank you for all the well wishes yesterday. Mr. Q.O. came through with flying colours. Everything about the day was amazing (well, okay — except for the getting up at 5:00 a.m. part). He was taken into the pre-op area almost the minute we arrived, a few minutes later I was sitting with him and met the surgeon, the anaesthesiologist, one of the surgical nurses and then the porter came to take him into the O.R. at which point I was sent up to the waiting lounge. Great volunteers there who kept tabs on who everyone was and for which patient they were waiting and who would, the minute they got calls from the O.R., immediately come over to tell those waiting how their relative was. By 9:30 I was on my way up to the short stay floor as he was already there and eating breakfast. His nurse on the short stay floor was an absolute gem. By shortly after 4:00 we were home. I’m glad we got home when we did as it was getting rather nasty outside and the roads were icy from the snow/rain combination that had begun to fall earlier in the afternoon. I ~~may~~ do moan about our climate, but I wouldn’t trade it for a second if it meant giving up our marvelous health care system.

For the record, getting up at 5:00 is not something I want to repeat very often. Drinking coffee at 5:30 a.m. is a rather futile endeavour for me – I don’t even remember the taste of it, as I think I was a walking zombie at that hour! While there were some people out and about at 6:30, there were nowhere near as many as I had been led to believe. Perhaps in the summer, when the weather is nicer, people are out and about earlier but on a rather windy, chilly day in early March? Not so many!

When we got home, Smudge practically broke all speed records getting to the door to greet us and demand some fresh food. Lester, on the other hand, was lounging on the couch and gave us one of those, “Well, where the heck have you been for all these hours?” looks and that was the extent of his reaction.

Smudge later in the evening after having an after-dinner snack.