Logs of Life

I am most relieved that this quilt is off my machine. The last 3 days have been hard to sew. Probably because there has been as much picking out of stitches as there has been of actual quilting. I was calling it Fester because my soul was festering underneath the need to finish it. But now that it is done, the name should be aptly changed. The quilt is an Opportunity quilt for the Folsom Quilt and Fiber Quilt Guild in Folsom, CA. It will be raffled off sometime around the time of their quilt show in February of 2011. This was my first time handling and working with the Cherrywood hand-dyes. I love batiks and the subtle variations that they have. These are similar to those, except that the finish on them is a bit drabber. They are likened to suede-fabric. The blocks on the quilt are 7.5", with 0.5" logs. Unfortunately, I ran into issues with the construction of some of these blocks. They were made by many different guild members, and each one has a different interpretation of 0.25" seam allowance. A few too many of them were closer to 0.1" and had stitches on the verge of popping out. It really challenged my sanity some days.

The last straw was the day I found an area with absolutely no seam allowance...ie., a hole. I just cannot fix that so it is up to the owners to deal with. I hope now that it is completed that all issues can be quickly forgotten. I have learned a few things about working diagonally with quilts. Lessons learned the hard way.

The focal center of the quilt is not really at the center of the quilt so I wanted to accentuate it somehow. The quilting is a little more formal with the pebbling around the almond shapes. I should say that the theme of this quilt show is Back Home Again. The coordinator wanted the quilt to somehow incorporate the Valley Oak, which is indiginous to that area. I hope I have done this acceptably. It is subtle, but it is there in a way that cannot be missed.

I have double batted this quilt - it has a layer of Hobbs 80/20 and a layer of Polydown. The quilt is heavy, and shows the quilting nicely. I used 4 different Superior threads on this: one that matches the border exactly, a lighter beige for the light logs, a medium brown for the darker logs, and then a red was added for accents. I realized that the delineation between the dark and light logs was not laying down well, so I outline quilted each leaf and added swirls in the dark areas with the red too. This helped to make the red leaf squares lay flat. You can hardly see the color difference inthe photo.

The borders of this quilt kick ass. Large plain borders kinda scare me. These are 10", and they are sort of like going onstage naked (not that I'd really know this first-hand) because absolutely everything that you quilt shows. Not like a print or a darker fabric. I'm not sure I handled the space between the leaf swirls and the feather as gracefully as is possible, but then. I do love the narrow 0.5" piano keys.

Here is the back of the quilt. Though I waffled on my feelings yesterday, I am very glad that I convinced the owner to ditch the floral backing she'd sent originally and to go with a solid. This is a medium brown Cherrywood. I think they call the color ochre. It shows all the threads I used so I had to be extremely careful on all my feather back tracking. I think it will be really pretty hanging after it is bound.
It is a pretty texture.

So if you live in the Sacramento area, be sure to go to the Folsom show in February and buy yourself a chance to win this lovely quilt.