Whilst watching The Creative Craft Show Live on Facebook last weekend (see the post), I viewed a conversation with textile artist Dionne Swift. During the interview, Dionne mentioned a collaborative project she’d conceived earlier during lockdown to create a virtual log cabin quilt in order to foster a sense of community amongst quilters/crafters during this very strange and unnerving time for many.
Along with her friends at The African Fabric Shop and with the help of a design by Janice Gunner (former President of The Quilters Guild of the British Isles), Dionne’s aim is to curate a huge log cabin quilt built by individual blocks uploaded by anyone who wants to get involved, the idea being the the small parts will create a big, beautiful whole. This I had to get involved with!
Janice’s instructions were easy to follow, and essentially required you to make a standard log cabin block measuring 8 inches/20cm with a yellow square at the centre measuring 2 1/2 inches/5cm to symbolise hope and light at the end of the tunnel.
The construction was using a foundation piece of fabric which I hadn’t encountered before and I must confess that my finished block before trimming was somewhat wonky on this fabric!
For the log cabin strips themselves, I decided to use some fat quarters from my stash all from the same collection – Indian Summer by Boundless Fabrics (a bargain bundle I managed to acquire when Bluprint were selling off their stock a little while back).
After all the pieces per the instructions were cut, it was time to start assembling them to the foundation square. Once completed, I trimmed down the block to the size required.
I then needed to take a perfectly square photo of the block that could be uploaded on Dionne’s website. As well as the photo of the block, the uploading process invited you to make a comment about the block you’d created so I wrote something along the lines of this being sunset fabrics and that I hoped the sun would soon set on the pandemic.
This was a quick little project that was fun to get involved with and I’m fascinated to see how far it goes. Dionne has stated that she’s keen for participants to send in their physical blocks at some point in the future, with a view I suppose to creating the actual quilt. It would be wonderful if this ends up being the case and the finished quilt be then either auctioned for charity or exhibited – exciting!
This is just a section of the quilt. My block features here on the bottom row, 3rd in from the left. It’s also worth searching for the Instagram hashtag #virtuallogcabin to see what people have created.
At the time of writing, there are hundreds of blocks! It definitely lifts your spirits to see it taking form.
The Quilting Spot. 