Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Angel Fire Dreamin'

Angel Fire Dreamin'
This is a log cabin quilt that I worked out how to do after seeing a picture of a similar log cabin quilt in Judy Martin's "The Creative Pattern Book".  The dark half of each block is made of 1" finished logs, and the light half of each block is made of 2" finished squares.  Except when they meet in the middle - those are 1" squares.  I wracked my brain to work out the block.  And then, that wasn't complicated enough so I had to throw in 9 stars that were also worked into 9 of the blocks.  Then the top hung around for about a year, and I wracked my brain some more and figured out how to do the border.  I worked on the whole project on-and-off for about two years.

The name comes from the fact that Jim and I had bought some property in Angel Fire, New Mexico.  I thought about that while I was making the blocks.  Maybe some day it will be on a bed in a log cabin in Angel Fire!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Aidan's Pirate Quilt

Aidan's Pirate Quilt
Aidan's Pirate Quilt















This was a birthday quilt for Aidan's 4th birthday.  Gordon said he really liked pirates.  I just gathered different fabrics with pirates or ships and started putting it together.  It turned out that I liked the map fabric and the blue ship fabric better than the pirates.  So what was going to be the border became the center motif.  I added the pieced ship and the compass in the top two corners.  The bottom two corners have fish, treasure chests and mermaids.

I did not follow a pattern for this quilt.  I would put pieces up on the design wall and the quilt told me what to do.

detail of Pirate Ship (top left)

detail of Mariner's Compass (top right)
detail of Mermaid and Treasure (bottom right)

detail of 9-patch