Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's time for Blogger's Quilt Festival again, brought to us by the lovely Amy of Amy's Creative Side.  Yay!  I love seeing all the wonderful quilts that everyone has made, and I especially love hearing all the stories of how and why each quilt came into existence.  If you love that too, grab your favorite drink and go take a look at them all by clicking on the link above.

My entry into this version of the BQF is my wallhanging Lib Logs (and Prosper).  (Regular readers of my blog are probably tired of seeing this quilt, so please, bear with me.)  I started this in a class with Gwen Marston on "Liberated Log Cabins".  I loved that class - Gwen is so knowledgeable and generous with her time, attention and information!  Plus, she's just so funny!  

And one of the best parts of the class was that I got to meet and stay with a bloggy friend, Sharon of Grass Roots Quilting.  We had such a fun weekend talking, laughing, eating and quilting together.  Sharon donated a strip of the hot pink fabric to this quilt, which was exactly the zing it needed.  Thanks, Sharon! 

This is such a happy quilt - at least it makes me happy seeing it hanging on the wall.  I love the bright, cheerful colors.  This is my husband's favorite quilt too.  He was the one that insisted that I enter this quilt in the Western Washington Fair, where I won a Third Place ribbon on it!

The log cabins are all free-pieced, which means no pattern, no particular sizes of cut strips and no planning.  Just cut up some strips and start piecing.  It is hard to "let go" and be improvisational, and yet it's the most fun I've had in quilting in years.  If you're interested, I recommend Gwen's books Liberated Quiltmaking II, Collaborative Quilting (with Freddy Moran) and Freddy and Gwen Collaborate Again as starting points.

I started with the plaid fabric as my focus fabric and used it for the centers of the log cabins, and then put the last of it on the outer borders.  All the other colors were pulled from the focus fabric.  One of the unexpected things I like is that the green dotted fabric in the first border creates a "see-through" effect in the log cabins where the same green fabric is.  It really gives some depth to the quilt.

The pieced borders are also free-pieced, and were a lot of fun.  So much so that I plan on using the triangles again in another quilt (or two)!

I did an all-over "organic" straight-line quilting (which is really not-so-straight) on this quilt on my Bernina, and I like how it seems to unify the quilt.  The whole quilt is rather flattened from the quilting, which I think really lets the piecing show well.  However, I quilted around the big dots in the aqua fabric, just to make them pop.  Fun!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Stats:

Quilt Title:  Lib Logs (and Prosper)  #378

Quilt Measurements: 31.5 inches square

Special Techniques: Liberated Free-piecing

Quilted by: Me, Sharon K.

Best Categories: Home Machine Quilted Quilt, Wall Hanging

Don't forget to vote for your favorite quilts November 5 - 8!