I don’t think it has ever taken me so long to really finish a quilt after the quilting is done. I wasn’t very diligent about stitching down the binding and it took me a couple of days. I found a problem spot in the binding and needed to do some repairs and while I was knotting and burying ends I found a seam that didn’t quite catch. It’s all done now though and I can safely say that my UFO for June is finished before the deadline.

I have wanted to make a Log Cabin quilt since I started quilting – I’m drawn to those traditional blocks. At a quilt show on the Island a few years ago I saw a log cabin that I really wanted to make. I found the out-of-print pattern but didn’t take it any further. At some point I realized that I didn’t need to make a huge quilt to test out the technique. I could make a smaller quilt and know whether I wanted to make another larger one. I still haven’t made up my mind on that larger quilt.

My records show that I started this in 2019. I know I finished all the blocks at our Thursday retreat that year. I had the layout planned but it lingered in a bin until it came up on my UFO list.

I purchased the purple and green swirl fabric much before then. The quilt shop was supposed to have some matching fabric to go with it but it took a long time to come in. In the meantime I had found quite a few other greens and purples and I didn’t end up using the matching fabric. I really like the fabric but I’ll use it for something else.

A new quilting book arrived just in time for me to use their suggestions for the quilting. I didn’t follow the book exactly but it gave me a good starting point.

I have no idea where this one will end up – but that isn’t really the purpose of my quilting.

It isn’t often that I get enthused about the Guild Challenge. Most years I do it but it is usually a last minute creation and often only a block or a placemat. But this year I got really “into” it after finding a pattern at the Saskatoon Quilt Show that would be just perfect.

Create a quilt that has a circus/fair theme. Use the enclosed fabric as part of the front of the quilt. The quilt should not be huge. A small one is good. The challenge should be finished and ready to show by the June meeting 2020. Your quilt should feature an animal.

We were given a fat quarter of the striped fabric. I wasn’t sure I would have enough for all the boxes (cages in my circus theme) but I actually had a little left over.

The quilting didn’t go as well as I had hoped. My free-motion quilting didn’t work at all and my appliqué work is sketchy at the best. For most of the quilt it was just straight lines but I did try to get a bit of texture (wrinkled skin) in the elephant. I ended up using embroidery floss to attach the patches. In spite of all my cursing when I was working on it, I love the end result.

This was an entry into the Guild’s 2025 quilt show.

In 2019 Kathy Parker, a Guild member, presented the striped fabric as our challenge for the year. We were directed to use the fabric on the front of our quilt and to show an animal. Shortly after receiving the challenge I found this pattern at the Saskatoon Quilt Show and it was a perfect match. Quilted on my domestic Janome.

This came out of a Guild workshop on a new technique for making a 9-Patch block. We used a layer cake (10″ Squares) and I must say that picking fabric from a single collection is a great way to go. Once the 9-patches were done I put the project away for awhile. It eventually turned up as one of my UFO Challenges.

About the same time that I was looking to sew the blocks together a blog I was following came out with a quilt-along to do a Disappearing 9-Patch. I thought that would be an interesting way to put the blocks together. The blogger gave so many choices that it was too hard to choose which look I liked best so I used four different ways to slice and restitch those blocks.

But I wasn’t done experimenting yet. I wanted to try my hand at a quilt-as-you-go technique; the Guild was having a class but it was on a Thursday and would interfere with my regular sewing session. So I looked online, got some help from my Tuesday stitchers and it was done in no time.

I enjoyed the technique particularly for the quilting. I used different quilting patterns on the different blocks – some showed up better than others but it was certainly easier to play when the space you were working on was smaller than the entire quilt.

There was a lot more hand stitching involved with this method than I realized. All the backing on the blocks is hand stitched to the block beside and beneath it. I chose to do this one without a sashing, but my next one (and I already have the blocks finished) will be with a sashing.

This was passed on to the Guild as a donation.