Saturday, October 4, 2014

Log cabin Light and shadow

I have always admired scrappy quilts, So far I have not admired any of my own personal attempts at them. After many hours of work on this latest log cabin quilt, after many different layouts and trying various forms of orientation I feel like giving up. My son, who I can always count on for an honest opinion, confirmed my fear- IT is way too busy, there is no place for the eye to rest. Maybe I am just at the place I go to in the middle of a project where I almost always feel like it is a failure half way through, I hope this is just that- and that I will love it again, once I am finished it will be something I can admire- I hope. Maybe once I add borders and binding it will be fine. I am torn- I was going to make this a really big quilt- Now I am unsure if I want to spend that much more time and fabric on something that I may continue to dislike- How is it possible- that all of these fabrics that I LOVE individually can look so awful together... Not sure where to go from here- Should I continue on and make this beast bigger- Or call it a day and finish as is- This is where I could really use the opinion of other quilters- I think I know where I went wrong- I used to many fabrics that do not read as solids, I maybe should have went in a safer direction and stayed with two colors - or one color in a light and dark. The antique quilts that I admire have two tones or colors- The red and white quilts for example. I love and they are still relevant in terms of style a hundred years later... So, maybe I can take a lesson from this- Less is more- I am a more is more kind of person, so maybe I have to work at taming it a bit- My son said to me- Mom- quilts usually only have a couple different colors in them- and he is right. I really wish I could get some advice as to how to make this garish quilt work- Maybe the right border will calm it down and make it work- This is where I really wish I had some friends that quilt- My MIL is so far away- Maybe I can show her this and she will know what to do. I have invested some of my fave fabric as well as my MIL's scrap fabric bin into this quilt- I have at-least a hundred cabins so far.... Each log is 1.5 inches unfinished- finishing at 1 inch. This was a fair bit of time invested so far- I LOVE chain piecing log cabins- I do a dozen at a time- which makes three whole blocks at once- of the light and shadow (diamond shapes).....