This fabrics for this month’s blocks came from Sarah of Hip to Piece Squares. She told us to do creative log cabins, and here’s what I came up with.

For the first block, I thought I’d do a couple of little log cabins within the square, and then I added some stripes to fill out the space. The block was too small, which is why I added that big floral strip in the center. I thought I liked this block, until I did block number two…

I’m really happy with this one, which I did at least a week after the first. Since I almost always piece improvisationally, I thought I’d kick it up a notch and play off the stripes from the first block and the log cabin idea. Traditionally log cabins are pieced around and around, working outward (kind of like a spiral). So I thought that instead I would still piece it in a spiral, only I would form the whole width of each section beforehand, in essence creating one “round” of log cabin pieces, but each “strip”  was made up from several strips of fabric. I made sure to include the dark navy fabric on every side to carry your eye around.

Then I cut something a little too short at the top left, so I filled it in with some bits and pieces and it was a most happy fix. I really love that little slanty thing. You can also see that I ran out of some fabrics at the top left- again- these are things you could worry about, but I learned (from Denyse Schmidt) that you can actually use these situations summon your creativity  (by adding the red fabric to the strip on the top right so that it aligned with the green vertical strip,  I essentially extended the line from the green edge ). I’m not sure if this makes any sense when I write it out, but the bottom line is this: improvisation= love.

Sometimes I think I’d like to play with fabric a lot, lot more. But I am up to my ears in yarn right  now. Which is one of the many reasons I’m thankful to be participating in 12Squared.