Not Your Grandmother's Log Cabin

In May 2010, I took a quilt class with a couple of friends at Country Concessions in Cookstown, ON. The class was taught by Marci Baker. I finished the table topper on time to enter it into my Quilt Guild's show, Harvest of Quilts in October. My quilt won the Viewer's Choice award for 'other quilted item'! I received a certificate, ribbon and a cheque as well. Today I went to the Creativ Needlework Festival in Toronto for the day and used my prize money to purchase Marci's brand new book, "ABC 3-D, Tumbling Blocks...and more!". I hope to try some tumbling blocks and more cubes using Marci's patterns!! Here is the table topper on my coffee table:

The completed top before quilting:

Detail of the quilting on the table topper:

The lovely handmade 'ribbon' that I received at the guild meeting! This is not your Grandmother's award ribbon either :-)!

Sock monkey finished

I finally finished my first sock monkey! I kept putting off embroidering the eyes and nose. I decided to just do it this morning :-). I am happy with the way his face turned out. Now I need a name for him. Any suggestions?

Here is a close up of his face to help in the naming of the monkey :-). He looks a little timid. Now on to the next one:

Jay and Katie's Quilt - Finally :-)

I was looking for photos on my blog of my row quilt and realized that it never did make it to the blog last year! It was a wedding gift, and I didn't post it right away so the bride and groom wouldn't see it, but I can't find it on the blog! So, better late than never, this was another UFO that has been in the works for a long time. I think I started it in 2000 or 2001? as a block of the month teaching project and I just kept adding blocks when I had another class and needed a sample to demonstrate :-). The blocks are 6" finished. I used the same background for each block then decided to set it in rows with sashing in between. Katie and Jay visited one day for coffee and the top happened to be on a table and she absolutely loved it. So, that decided where this quilt was going to go! Here is the finished quilt:

Leaves quilted in the border:

Maple leaves and sailboats:



Houses with 'curtains' in the window:

Hole in the barn door with a funky flower quilted in the centers:

Scotty dogs and spools:

More Scotty dogs:


The finished quilt from the other side:

Our "Spirit of Gees Bend" Challenge results

On Friday, six of the seven ladies that accepted Susan's Challenge to make a small quilt in the spirit of the Gees Bend Quilts, met for lunch after attending the London Friendship Quilt Guild show together. Unfortunately, Susan wasn't able to join us, so we hope to meet again soon to see what Susan came up with. We also invited Christine to join us for lunch. We ordered our meals first and while we waited for them to arrive, we took over the restaurant and had a blast seeing everyone's little quilts. Isn't it funny how you'd never dare to take out a quilt, stand up and show it off in a public spot, but when there are seven ladies, we don't even notice the people around us and yak up a storm and have a great time, totally oblivious to the reactions of people around us :-)! I clued in when I was madly taking pictures, trying not to get the glare of the windows to throw off my photo, and I see the puzzled looks of several ladies sitting at a nearby table. I'm not sure if they were quilters or not, but I really wondered what they were thinking of these totally non traditional quilts :-)! Maybe they thought we were showing off our first projects since we didn't get them quite straight LOL.

Susan drafted the guidelines for our challenge. We could only use a pair of scissors, strong thread, thimble and, if we wanted to use a sewing machine, it had to be a straight stitch machine only. We were also not allowed to buy anything for this project, so it was 'make do'.

Here is Amy with her little quilt made from scraps of clothing she sewed long ago for her four girls. She pieced and quilted it on a straight stitch machine and stitched the binding by hand.

Christine in the background admiring Amy's quilt

This is me (Jacqui) with my Housetop design. My favourite quilts at the Gees Bend show were these housetop patterns. My daughter went to Jamaica on a Mission trip when she was 15 and she brought this bright fabric home for me. Since it was a rayonny type fabric, I figured it would be perfect. Wow, cutting this with scissors was like nailing jello to a tree LOL! The black is a sports cotton. I pieced and quilted it on my Singer 15-88 treadle and did the quilting in the floral sections by hand.

I had enough of the floral for backing so I used it all up!


Here is Jackie's project. I'm not sure if she did it by machine or by hand, but I will update that info later:

Nice job Jackie!!

Lynn did a bars and blocks variation using a 1940's tablecloth with other fabrics she had in her stash.

She even pieced the back adding to the charm:

Yellie is holding up her project while Gail tries to get that perfect shot :-)


Very cute Yellie. Not sure if this is done by machine or by hand either. More info to follow.


Gail made hers out of denims and corduroys. She and her daughter are both short and always need to hem up pants. These are the cut offs. She did it all by hand! Quilting that must have been a real challenge :-).


A closer view of the little wallhanging. You can check out more photos of this get together on Gail's blog.