Twisted Log Cabin Quilt

Remember Alex Anderson's TV show "Simply Quilts"? I miss that show, I learned a lot of new quilting techniques from watching it! At the beginning of every episode they showed a Twisted Log Cabin quilt. About 4 years ago I decided to design and piece one of my own, from the concepts presented in Barbara Kaempter's book Log Cabin with a Twist. Mine is still a UFO, I never did figure out what I wanted to do for a six sided border, let alone the quilting. So, here it is, as is, about 30" across.
When I designed this quilt, I created it full size on paper with all the colors. There are 24 triangles in the quilt, and every one is a different color combination! I really enjoyed the paper piecing, but this one has so many little pieces, so the foundation paper is staying on the back!RaNae Merrill wrote a book, Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts. Her book takes the twisted log cabin to a new level by creating spirals in 4, 5, and 6+ sided shapes. She is in the process of writing yet another book based on spirals, and I am lucky to be part of her "Quilt Lab". I am designing a quilt, and will piece it and quilt it, and hopefully it will be in her next book! I am not allowed to explain the details of the book, but stay tuned, it should be another beautiful book that you will want in your quilt library!

Are You a Fabric-aholic?

I love fabric! And like many of you, I have a pretty substantial stash :-) Of course when I make a quilt I never have exactly what I need, so I end up buying more. I collect cat fabrics, heart fabrics (after all, it's Valentine Quiltworks!), bright colored fabrics, pretty fabrics, and any fabric that I like. The main reason I am writing about fabric is because I want to share my two favorite online fabric websites. The first one is www.fabric.com. They get new fabric every few days, and they have good prices, and free shipping if you spend over $35 (that never seems to be a problem!). The other website I like is www.thousandsofbolts.com. Everything is about $4/yard, and who cares if it is last season's fabric? It is all name brand, quilt shop quality, and they also get new fabric every week or so. Both sites tell you how much they have in stock too. I must add that I do like to support my local quilt shops, especially if I need something specific or need to match colors, but occasionally I like to support my stash habit late at night, so the internet is handy for that!

"Friends are like fabric, you can never have enough!"