Squirrel!

I really should have  been working on one of the wedding quilts, one of the quilts cut with the AccuQuilt machine, or one of the other two quilt tops in my studio.  Instead, I followed an outdoorsy squirrel and spent a week piecing improv log cabin blocks.  (Although this is an outdoorsy quilt, there are no actual squirrels on the fabric.  Hehe.)

I was really missing camping this year.  It is much too hard with a baby and we had some other complications as well.  So my outdoorsy scraps kept calling to me from their box.  I estimated that there was about 6 yards of fabric in there from eight quilts and some other projects.  I hoped I could make a twin or queen size quilt.  I started with some 5.5 inch fussy cut squares mostly left over from my husband and father's quilts. 

I fussy cut more scraps for a total of 50 blocks centers.  I used medium sized scraps to sew the first round of logs around the fussy cut square.  I just used scissors to cut the pieces to size.  Then I took my small scraps and sewed them end to end like a big binding.  That would provide some pieced logs for the improv log cabin blocks.  

After that I cut my remaining fabric into strips from 1.25 to 2 inches wide.  I continued sewing the like sized strips together like binding so I could keep sewing logs on the blocks.  Sometimes the same fabric was sewed together and sometimes different fabrics.  That helped me use up every inch of the fabric strips.  I kept adding logs until I could square the blocks up at 12.5 inches.  Then I laid them out on my design floor.  

I didn’t spend much time rearranging the blocks because it was pretty crazy to begin with.  I made sure to orient the blocks in different directions because I didn’t want there to be a specific direction to the quilt.  Then one day I sewed all the blocks together into a quilt.  I had darling visitors that day.  

The girls were so good I was able to finish sewing the blocks together in one day.  

It was a great use of my scraps.  This is all that I have left from the box.  

I was even able to use this weird border print by cutting it into three strips. 

 

I think it is funny that some of my logs have actual log fabric.  

I laid the quilt top on Cheetah’s bed to see how it would fit on a queen size bed.  (He is the tallest person in our family now and needs a big bed.)

The quilt top used 49 of the blocks.  One will be for a pillow.  It finishes at 84 by 84 inches.  That’s not bad for one box of scraps.  I think I will add a small dark brown border to make it a bit bigger.  

My husband loves this quilt.  Cheetah likes it too and offered to let me keep it in his room when he goes to college.  

I had so much fun piecing my camping quilt.  It was very therapeutic to me.  Scrap quilting is wonderful.  

XX,

Jasmine