September is Finished

You may recall that I had started out trying to remake a second "Cappuchino" quilt, a large scale log cabin in browns and creams. Here is the original one made back around the first of April of this year.

After it is shown at this weekend's quilt show, it will be shipped to Connecticut for a belated birthday present for my "kid" (53 years old) sister, Lucinda. But I liked it so much that I wanted to do it all over again!

I made a few blocks, decided that I needed more, then changed my mind completely and made even more blocks, LOL! These large scale log cabins play well with multiples of six, so I chose to make 36 of them.
We were blessed with some gorgeous fall weather that had no wind. I used the time to try some different block layouts on my asphalt driveway. It has to be a calm day or else I'm chasing breeze-strewn blocks down the street, LOL!

I very much liked this above shot of a barn raising variation with the light medallion in the center.

But I wanted to see it with a dark center, too, so I tried that next.

No, I liked the first one better and went back to that. But what I really wanted was a large star in the center and I could not get it!

Finally, I realized that the large light medallions are what define the big star. It helps if you squint at the picture to see it. But I needed to change that very distracting corner treatment!

Ahha! Now this is the one that won!
It's sort of a big star surrounded by a barnraising. If you know the name for this setting, please do tell me. I'm just re-inventing the wheel, I'm sure.
Once I got the blocks labeled and stacked, I was pooped out! There's a lot of exercise there with all that fun of arranging the blocks. I had a ball, but I was tired.
Saturday I worked feverishly to get all the blocks sewn together into rows. I felt nervous about the layout being so tricky, so I carried all the rows upstairs and back out onto the driveway to double check everything.

YEEHAW!!! Everything was perfect!

The reason that I was hurrying so much was because Sunday the 29th was the last studio day that was booked for a while at Ellen Peters' quilting studio. Would I make it?
I sewed the last rows into place Sunday morning and carefully pressed the top and rushed over to the studio.

Ellen loaded the quilt for me and I was off and quilting!

I did the same wonky freehand spirals on this quilt as I had done on the first one.

But this was a MUCH bigger quilt! It took me all afternoon to complete it with one ten minute break. Poor Ellen wanted to leave to go to a concert but she graciously allowed me to stay and finish my quilting.
Thank you to Ellen, for letting me stay the extra half hour, and another big thank you to Rosemary for staying with me to help me take the quilt off of the machine at the end.

Sorry that this next photo was overexposed but it does show the quilting pattern a little bit.

When I got home I was thrilled to find that Felix had made lobster salad-filled lobster rolls!!!

Yippeee! I had those lobstah rolls and felt even better after Felix rubbed my back and shoulders with extra strength Ben-Gay! He is such a dear husband.
He did even one more supportive quilty husband thing; when admiring my handiwork, he dubbed the quilt the Davy Crockett Log Cabin. Who am I to argue with that?? LOL!

Today I trimmed and applied the binding and I'm still working on hand hemming it down on the back.
So tonight September is finished and so is this quilt, almost.


Happy sewing!