My Twin Log Cabin Quilts

The Moda Bake Shop is celebrating quilts with stories right now, and it took me a while to figure out which quilt I wanted to write about. Don't all quilts have stories?

There's the green Scrappy Trips Around the World that I finished for my son just before he decided that he didn't like green anymore. There's the Nancy Drew quilt that I'm still giddy about, and Cabbage Roses, which is made up of the Drunkard's Path blocks I pinned while I was recovering from knee surgery, and the quilt I made myself for my 38th birthday after Hubby got called into work and I was stuck at home alone with the kids and a promise of dinner out a few days later.

And there are the twin log cabin quilts I made for me and Grandma. My quilting started with scrap bags that Grandma found while she was scouring the local thrift shops to find furniture for her antique mall. I had no intention of making myself a log cabin quilt, not ever. And then I wound up making two in a huge hurry.



In  mid-November of 2008, I was making myself a log cabin quilt from 1 1/2" strips. It was already the 7th of December when I decided that I wanted to make my grandmother a quilt for Christmas and that I wasn't about to give her mine because I'd included the last little scraps of some of my favorite prints. That meant finishing two identical quilts before Christmas Eve.

If you're one of my regular readers, you know that I have four kids. At the time I was tackling these two quilts, the youngest two were two and (barely) four.  That was also the year that I learned to drive on icy roads because I had to have batting and backing for that quilt in time to finish it for Christmas. In my defense, the roads weren't bad at all until I was fifty miles from home and almost to the fabric store. Hubby was watching the kids, and there wasn't going to be another opportunity, with or without them, in time for me to finish the quilt.

Grandma's quilt, the one on the left, was done in time for the gift exchange, and my own was done and bound on January 17, 2010. I loved that combination of scraps so much that I made a courthouse steps version a few years later.

These might be my quilts with the best story. They definitely make me happy!

Here's a full shot of Grandma's Quilt:


And mine, before quilting: