Log Cabin Quilt Blocks

I've been going through things in my craft room, trying to organize and simplify them. There is a lot of stuff being stored in there right now, and if it wasn't, crafting would be oh so much easier. That said, some of the things I find aren't easy to find (emotionally) and then aren't easy to know what to do with.

Generally, I'm getting to a place where deciding whether to let go is getting easier. Still, yesterday, I found several sets of quilt block pieces that my mom had cut out. Not enough for a whole quilt. At least not a whole quilt with any one of the blocks. I know I could talk a lot right now about my mom, and her love of crafting, and making things. I could go on and on about how diabetes took her eyesight, and how much that sucked. And it did. Instead, I'm going to talk about a journey I took, today.

I started with a decision. am I going to keep this project or get rid of it. I'm sure I could find someone, somewhere who would be ecstatic to receive these pre-cut pieces. I'm still working on that decision on some of the squares. But, I decided to sew these up. Roxanne and I have been building some quilt blocks of our own, so these didn't seem too far away from that. The centers for all theses blocks is some coppery squares, then there are strips of (mostly) flowers. I put them on the table with my sewing machine thinking... hmmmm log cabin quilt. I know how that works. I'll arrange the strips by length and go to town. And so it started. I had enough short strips for 18 blocks. There were more squares, and I'll figure out what to do with those some time.

I wondered briefly what my mom's plan for them had been, and then decided that I just needed to move along. The next few strips went on fairly randomly, mostly alternating dark then light. That really wasn't so esthetically pleasing though as I would have liked. Now, I'll be working through 2 darks and 2 lights. I've learned some about this quilting process, even with such a basic task. I'm not sure I think these blocks are pretty, but I certainly think the finished product could be useful. I'm still not sure what that finished project will be. It won't be whatever Mom had in mind, but perhaps it won't be so far off, either.

By the time I had ironed my last square for the day, I felt like I had dipped into a hope chest from my mother, and found the hope, still there, waiting for me.