Friday, April 26, 2013

Log Cabin Quilt and Spinning

I finished the log cabin quilt!


I have always wanted to make a log cabin quilt and was so pleased to finally have a large enough variety of coordinating fabrics to make one.
The blocks are 7" square, with a 13 by 13 layout (there are 2197 pieces in this quilt!). The "logs" are 1" wide (cut 1+1/2"). The design is an Off Set Barn Raising. It is 91" square. I used silk batting because I wanted it to have an "old-fashioned" look after washing (silk batting shrinks a bit, and wool batting doesn't).


 I quilted feathers in the light sections, and lines in the dark sections.


I used a walking foot with a guide for the lines - they are 1" apart.


I used Genziana thread for all the quilting. It is an Italian thread, very fine, like Aurifil, but available at a local fabric store (I have to order Aurifil online). I have used it before, but this is the first time I quilted a whole quilt with it and I couldn't believe the amount of lint that it generated. It is still a very nice thread to use.


This quilt is for my son's bed. He has a single mattress on an antique bed frame that is between a single and a double bed in size, so it needs a big quilt to hide the frame (there is a big down duvet under the quilt making the bed look big). I chose an off set layout because I didn't want a large "bull's eye" in the centre of the bed.

Last week I said that I had a choice of things to work on, and I did spin some wool before getting to the quilt.


This was the starting fibre bundle - Merino from SweetGeorgia, in the colour-way Tavern.


I split the fibre across the length, and with one section I split it down the length a few times, so that the colour changes would be short. The other half I spun as is, so the colour changes would be long.


Here are the resulting bobbins - the one on the left has the short colour changes and the one on the right has the long changes.


Here is the wool all plied. It came out to 14 wraps per inch, about a DK weight.


I spun the wool to go with some natural Merino I had spun the week before, to make a scarf. This is the "Alex Scarf" from the Craftsy class Explorations in Brioche Knitting. The pattern is so lovely, and just challenging enough to make it very interesting to knit. You can see more of these scarves on the Craftsy project page.



You can see the colour changes on the back of the scarf.


I have some more Merino of the spinning wheel - for this one I am spinning a lace/fingering weight yarn - it will take a long time to spin. This one is also Merino from SweetGeorgia, in a Pomegranate colour way .

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!
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