Christmas Log Cabin Quilts

Once again, I am thinking about making Log Cabin Christmas quilts for family. This time for all the great grandchildren. I made 9 Log Cabin quilts with red white and green fabrics for Christmas 2000. I  made one quilt for each married couple and one for each grandchild. You can read about those quilts here.

Now I have 7 great grandchildren, maybe I should make a couple extra quilts.  That would be 9 quilts and if I start now I should be able to get them done in time for Christmas next year. I think that I should make 9 identical blocks and let them find the blocks in their quilts, as I did the first time.  Maybe I should just make some extra identical blocks and if more GGkids come along I can use those blocks in quilts I make later.

I got these boxes down from the closet shelf.  The top box is 2 inch strips of all colors; I will pull out what I want and cut them down to 1.5 inches.
The center 2 boxes are Christmas fabrics, some are strips and some are pieces.
The bottom box is 1.5 inch strips. I will pull out the colors I want  and then I will put these boxes back on the shelf and make a new box(or boxes) for the strips I want to use. I like having a lot of the fabrics I used before. When  I made a family quilt in the past, I included something somewhere in the quilt from everyone else's quilt.




I found these seven blocks in my "odd block box" and I will use these as a start.  




















The first time I made the Log cabin Christmas quilts, I finished ALL of my UFO's, yes, every last one! Log cabin blocks are labor intensive and become boring after a while. Sometimes I needed a break from them but I would not allow myself to start any new projects. So, when ever I needed a rest from the log cabins, I worked on a UFO project. I think I will do the same again and first up will be the Fancy Forest 2 quilt.

This is a good time to get started because the weather is such that we will not be going out for a few days. I do regret that I might not be able to get to the quilt shops to take advantage of the Christmas fabric sales. I will keep an eye on the weather and we'll see if there is a chance to get out. Of course, there is always the Internet.

Looking back ten years

 Ten years ago I made 9 log cabin Chrismas quilts for my family for Christmas. The blocks were 7 inches finished and the quilts were around 46 x 60. I designed them in Electric Quilt and they are all different. By designing the layouts in EQ I was able to figure out how many of each  kind of block that I needed. I made 9 identical blocks, one for each quilt. In each quilt it was in a different place. I told everyone that it was there but they had to figure out which one it was. 

I started in November a year earlier and I finished all the blocks by September the following year  and I finished the quilts before Thanksgiving. 

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I would not allow myself to start any new projects during the time I worked on them but I could work  on unfinished projects. Log cabin blocks are labor intensive and making them can get boring after awhile so I broke up the time with other things. That year I finished every UFO that I had. there were none left by the time the LC quilts were finished. Everyone was surprised because no one ever saw  me working on them.

I thought that if I made everyone Christmas quilts they might last forever because they wouldn't be used all the time. My mother in law kept hers out all the time because she liked it. She didn't really use it but kept it draped  over the  back  of a love seat. When  she moved into a nursing home she used it every day and it was laundered in the laundry there. We have it now that she is gone and it still  looks pretty good, only a few of the green fabrics are faded. 

 

Below on the left is the one block  that was identical in every quilt.  

Now that there are great grand children I think about making Christmas quilts for them, that would be 5 quilts. I still have some red, white and  green strips and I am considering pineapple log cabin.

From the time I started quilting I always liked to include something in every family quilt I made that I had used in another family quilt.  I think I started doing it because I bought 10 yards of a  background print but it seemed like a nice tradition  to continue. The quilts are kind of like families

the come from the same gene/fabric pool but they are each different and unique.