2016 TBT #1

Lightning Strikes Twice pattern found here.

For the very first throw-back-Thursday of 2016 (on this blog at least) I decided to share some log cabin quilts. I recently wrote a blog post over on Craftsy about the history and legend of these blocks and variations. I find this block so fun not only because it's got a good story to go with it, but the variations have soooooo many possibilities.

My first log cabin from the late 1990's (look at those Thimbleberries prints!)

I have tried quite a few of them personally. I started with the traditional dark/light in rows. This quilt is still special to me because these fabrics remind me of so many other projects that I made. There are prints from our Christmas stockings in here, scraps from quilts I made as gifts and so many other items. I am almost certain this is the first quilt I made with no pattern at all, I just started sewing strips. Surely, the writing was on the wall by the time this one was finished! LOL

Here's a close up of one of them shown at the top of this post.

Then I made two quilts in the streak-of-lightning setting. I made these quilts for my boys beds for the holidays. When my kids were little they loved the quilts I made for them and all of the fun pillow cases for different special events and holidays. When they were 7 years old I decided to make these quilts for their room for Christmas. Being twins, they liked things similar but always wanted to be able to readily tell them apart. Choosing red for Danny and Green for David only made sense.

I got ambitious and made a crazy pineapple quilt that I thought might be my last paper piecing project ever. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but because I thought it might take me the rest of my life to get those tiny strips of paper removed from the back. This is an Edyta Sitar pattern and I think it's called Hawaiian Delight? Or something similar? It's one of her patterns, not in one of her books.

Notice that throw back photos don't have the same quality?

It might be time to re-photograph some of these quilts. Yikes!

I've also made a log cabin quilt for my husband. He still teases me that REAL quilts have borders and this one doesn't have a border. So you better believe, his last quilt had 3 borders. I don't have time to listen to his belly aching. LOL

Photo courtesy of AP&Q.

This year, the quilt I have featured in the AP&Q Calendar is a log cabin. I added some hot pink half square triangles to the center of the blocks and the border. I love all of these fun prints and if you look closely you will see batiks, repros, converstionals, and homespuns among all of those crazy prints. I don't think a quilt can have too many different kinds of fabrics.

And there might even be a log cabin quilt in my new book. Oh look, it's even in the C&T catalog. Hmm, guess they like log cabin quilts too! LOL

Recently, I've been playing with log cabin blocks again. I have a print hanging in my hallway of an old wonky log cabin quilt hanging on a clothesline. I have made blocks in different sizes to see how they play together. There are quite a few options it seems...

Just some log cabin blocks hanging out on the design wall.

I have tried to do a throw back Thursday in the past, and even had linky parties for it. I loved seeing what other fun projects were lurking out there from years past. I am going to try to attempt that again. My goal this year is to do a throw back Thursday linky party the first Thursday of every month. That is easier than weekly and maybe I'll do a better job of remembering this year. I've even written it on my calendar, so there's hope! Start thinking about some oldies but goodies you would like to share. You know you have them...

Enjoy every stitch!
Diane