Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Now that I’ve got my new sewing machine, it was time to put the 144 log cabin blocks together. I had a printout of the layout and thought I’d do a square/rectangular section at a time, then join the sections. Not so easy with this layout.

Because I’d chosen layout number two, the only way I could do the initial joins was to join 12 blocks together in one long strip. That gave me 12 strips (of 12 blocks). I then sewed strips 1 and 2 together, strips 3 and 4, 5 and 6 and so on. Next step was to sew the 1 and 2 strip to the 3 and 4 strip; the 5 and 6 to the 7 and 8, and so on.

One good thing about foundation paper piecing is that the joins are accurate! The bad thing is the extra time it takes to sew the blocks (15 mins each – that’s 36 hours alone just for sewing the individual blocks!!), then to tear off the strips of 1/4″ paper after finishing each seam.

Joins

So now I have three strips 4 blocks wide that still need to be sewn together. I’ll wait until the next craft afternoon near the end of the month before I do that as I’ll need a really large table area to work on. Once that’s done the main top is finished. Then comes the border fabric and the backing, then the quilting, which I’ll get Judy to do on her long arm machine — there’s no way that I could fit that size quilt into any domestic sewing machine!

Two-block strip of 12 blocks

See also:

• Log Cabin Quilt: 1
• Log Cabin Quilt: 2
• Log Cabin Quilt: 3 (mini quilts—side project)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 4 (this post)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 5 (putting the top together)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 6 (making the back)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 7 (the completed back)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 8 (finished!)