Quilting the Log Cabin

I haven't been quilting much lately - why is that a constant statement on this blog?  Jeez.  My school year is almost over and I'll have about three weeks before the baby is due, so I hope to get some progress done on these quilts...plus the baby blanket I still have to make for her...plus the baby blanket I have to make for my cousin...

...I should do less blogging and more sewing.

Anyway, I basted my scrappy log cabin quilt and finally got a start on quilting it.  I was stuck on how to quilt it...I figured straight lines would make the most sense since they would just follow the lines of the quilt.  But I'm planning on doing straight line stitching on my mom's Carpenter's Wheel quilt, and I didn't really want to be doing tons of straight line quilting.  That would be boring.

So I figured a free motion design might work well on this one.  I thought and thought about what to do and felt totally stuck.  I looked up free motion designs on Pinterest and Leah Day's blog, but nothing clicked.  Then I found a blog called The Inbox Jaunt where she posted free motion quilting tutorials where she stitched things that looked like real objects.  That kind of clicked for me...when I thought about how I wanted this quilt to be used, I thought about my kids snuggling under it for years to come.  I wanted them to be able to be able to look at the beautiful variety of fabrics I used to make it, but I also wanted them to be able to spend time cuddled under it, running their fingers over the quilting.  My daughter loves the pink and red quilt I made, which I quilted all over with spirals.  I thought they'd love this too.

Also, wow, was it ever nice to get my beautiful Singer 115 out of its cabinet.  I hadn't used it in forever!  Free motion quilting is such a pleasure on that machine...smooth, speedy, wonderful.  It's by far my favorite machine.

I used one of her tutorials (the flower one), but mostly I'm just making up pictures as I go.  It's like doodling with thread.  It's fun and low-stress, since the design is so busy that the quilting really isn't center-stage anyway.  It's slow but enjoyable.  I'm making flowers, some meandering lines, some shapes like hearts and concentric circles, phrases and words in cursive, and some random pictures.  It's kind of hard to photograph, but below you can see one of the things I did tonight - a happy cat.

It's a long way from perfect.  It's a long way from beautiful.  But if I can fill this quilt with designs like this one, I know I'll be so much better at the end than I was at the beginning.  That's really what it's about...that, and creating something cheerful, colorful, and warm that my husband and kids will use over and over again.

I think both of those goals will be met by the end.