Bear Party "Cabin" Utility-Style Picnic Quilt

Sharon Holland has written a fun book of large patch, easy-to-piece quilts. The log cabin quilt above was made using her pattern "Cabin" in Utility-Style Quilts for Everyday Living.  The quilt is her book is a play on the stripes of the traditional Hudson Bay wool blankets. 

This pattern immediately drew me in--I think it's the perfect quilt for a picnic!  But I wanted to use a different palate and green was was on my mind!

JP Knit & Stitch, a yarn and fabric store in Jamaica Plain, MA, recently changed hands. The new owner brought in a lovely selection of fabrics, including a number of low volume prints. The black prints on white (animal prints and floral prints) and the solid colors are all from JP Knit & Stitch.  I added a couple new colored prints and some fabrics from my stash.

The quilting is all straight line done with a walking foot.
This quilt is really fun and happy!

Emmy and Greg, Bamboletta Forever Friends, took the quilt out to the garden for a snack. Turns out this 'Bear Party' quilt is also great for tumbling when the picnic food is gone!

Happy Summer!!

Hexagon Log Cabin Quilt

I have two new quilts to share with you this week.

Every summer the Proper Bostonian Quilters guild has a Summer Challenge. (Lest our hand be idle in the summer months when we don't have meetings)!  This summer the challenge was hexagons.

English Paper piecing immediately comes to mind when hexagons are mentioned. But there are other ways to create hexagons, including using strips of 60 degree triangles.

I, however, trod completely off any beaten path by deciding to make a Hexagon Log Cabin quilt!

I had a stack of laser pre-cut hexagons in my stash.  I decided to get out my bag of remnant fabric strings and use them to make log cabin blocks using the hexagon pre-cuts as the enter patch. 

I quickly understood why houses typically are constructed with 4 sides.  It took SO much longer to add strips of fabric to 6 sides of each block!  My fabric strings were a variety of widths of the quilt has a modern improv character, which I really like.  I had some handmade EPP hexagon blocks which I appliqued on the center of some of the log cabin blocks. So this quilt has a little bit of everything!

I quilted it it using free-form organic curves which follow the lines in the blocks. It looks great on the front of the quilt, but rather a mysterious mess on the back!

Back of the Hexagon Log Cabin Quilt

This was an interesting exercise.  Even though I really like this quilt which has so much amazing visual motion, I can't imagine I'll ever make another one!

Autumn Diamonds: Bricks in the Barnyard Bonnie Hunter Pattern

Here's my completed "Autumn Diamonds."  The pattern is Bonnie Hunter's "Bricks in the Barnyard" from her book Scraps and Shirttails II.

This quilt--it's so cheerful!  It is a log cabin variation.

Do you like searching games? There is one red triangle facing the wrong direction. I found it when I was doing the quilting. It may be a mistake, but it makes me smile!