Sewing Sewing Sewing

Different sized Skinny Logs laid out on the floor. This was yesterday.

Something you don't ever want to see - the right side of the fabric when it's meant to be wrong. I didn't realize my fabric strip was doubled up, so I had to take out this seam and resew just one additional layer of fabric, thank you very much.

I sew multiple blocks onto the same strip, but take care so that I'm mixing the blocks up and they don't all look the same. Not only that, but the blocks are at different stages, so the fabric will appear in a different place on each of the blocks. Mostly. The fabric probably will get used again (though I haven't done much of that so far) but there will be different blocks in the mix. Not sure that makes any sense whatsoever, but that's my method.

This is what my staging area looks like, although I hadn't mixed each stack up yet so that each pile had different fabrics on top. Inaccurate, but you can see how I work with different sized blocks all at the same time.

I am sooo much happier now that I am using some of the wilder fabric again. I know I already wrote that, but I can't even begin to emphasize how dull all that safeness was making my quilt. I've discovered that Bonnie is right, you cut any fabric up small enough and it will work. I've fallen in love with some of my fabrics that I thought were too busy to use and I've also learned that some are still darn ugly, but work in the general scheme of things.

And I needed zingers. So I added Halloween fabric featuring spiders even though it's awfully pale and a fun alien fabric that Siobhan gave me, even though the eyes on the critters were yellow. I know, I can be so ridiculous about my colors sometimes. Stupidly so. I'll show you some fabric close-ups another day, but take a look at this:

I don't know what setting I'm going to use (but it may be this one, because I loved it right away), but this is the size of the log cabin blocks - seven layers of logs. The blocks are a bit less than 8" right now. My personal wonkiness is definitely showing in these blocks. I did a round of squaring them up. Even the blocks with the same number of logs are different sizes and some are even rectangular rather than square. I love it when I stand back and look at the results - the irregular logs add life. It can just be frustrating while I'm sewing and the fabrics are escaping from my feed dogs, making my seams narrower or wider than desired.

I haven't finished straightening up after Christmas. I had to reorder our shelves to make room for our new books so I moved bunches of my alabaster vases over here to the hutch, but I haven't figured out how I want them yet and with what. Christmas quilts are still on the wall too. D'oh.

Sorry this was a babbly post, but I don't think my lunch of Spicy Nacho Doritos was good brain fuel. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.