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Quilty Love

A quilting creative blog

Stash buster quilt series

Christmas Lucky Log Cabins quilt

Today I’m sharing a Christmas Lucky Log Cabins quilt! This fast and easy stash buster is sewn up using the Alison Glass Holiday line.

If I could only ever make one quilt for the rest of my quilting days it would probably be Lucky Log Cabins..haha. I’ve made so many Lucky Log Cabins and could still make so many more.

Lucky Log Cabins is part of the Quilty Love Stash Buster series and a stash buster it is. Mix and match fabric strips from your stash for this log cabin look alike quilt.

Lucky Log Cabins is in the Quilty Love pattern shop here.

Christmas Lucky Log Cabins quilt

For this Lucky Log Cabins quilt, I used Alison Glass Holiday fabric. This fabric is the leftovers from another star quilt I made. It was probably equivalent to a fat eighth bundle. I cut it up into strips and then added a few Alison Glass Kaleidoscope fabrics from my stash.

What I love the most about Lucky Log Cabins is how you can use leftover bundles like this. Lucky Log Cabins is super versatile and perfect for those odd fabric bundles you have sitting in your stash.

I’m convinced everything looks good in Lucky Log Cabins after making and seeing dozens upon dozens of them.

The ultimate stash buster quilt pattern

Lucky Log Cabins is the first in the Quilty Love stash buster quilt pattern series. It is a true stash buster! Lucky Log Cabins is a strip pieced quilt that doesn’t require any background or accent fabrics. So most precuts in your stash will work. Use jelly roll strips, fat eighths, fat quarters, 1/4 yards, half yards or anything you can cut 2.5 inch strips from.

Quick and Easy quilt pattern

Lucky Log Cabins is a super quick and easy quilt pattern to sew up. It’s actually a really fun one to sew up too. I keep saying that it is addicting to make because it really is! You will be thinking about 6 other versions you want to sew up when you make one.

Scrappy and Happy

Lucky Log Cabins is a nice and scrappy quilt. That makes piecing super fast and easy since all fabric placement is random. The only thought I put into fabric placement is when I’m making the strip sets. I try to make my strip sets flow.

So a lot of the time I’m placing fabrics next to each other that flow well or play nicely together. It’s not super critical since in the end it all gets mixed anyways.

You can see my strip sets below.

Lucky Log Cabins quilt pattern

I named this log cabin look alike pattern “lucky” because that is how it came about. This is one of those rare times that I took the time to just play as I was sewing. I had no design in mind but just started cutting and sewing. I almost scrapped this idea because it just wasn’t coming together. After the project sat away for a while, I pulled it back out and worked on it with fresh eyes. This log cabin shape emerged.

I call this a log cabin look alike because it’s not a true log cabin block. Log Cabin blocks start with a center “log” and then you build log’s around it. But the end result of this quilt reminds me of the classic log cabin quilt block.

Bright and colorful Christmas Lucky Log Cabins quilt

This Alison Glass Holiday line is a fun, bright and happy Christmas line. It’s got your traditional green and reds but also includes some fun pinks, teals and yellows. The end result is a fun and happy Christmas quilt. This fabric line is from a few years ago so it might be getting harder to find.

Long Arm Quilting

Jenae of Vintage Stitch quilted up this Christmas Lucky Log Cabins quilt. The pantograph is called Ikat. Jenae also did the binding for me. She offers binding services with her quilting so you can get your quilt back completely finished! It’s like magic.

Peppered Cotton Wideback

The backing of this Christmas Lucky Log Cabins quilt is a Peppered cotton widleback. I love the peppered cotton wide backs and even carry a few in my shop.

Materials Used

Quilt Pattern: Lucky Log Cabins quilt by Quilty Love
Fabrics: AG Holiday by Alison Glass for Andover fabrics
Pieced on my Janome MC6700p
Quilted by Vintage Stitch

Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese Quilt

Today I have the Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese quilt to share! This monochromatic flying geese quilt is sewn up with Elizabeth Hartman Paintbox fabrics by Robert Kaufman. I made this Patchwork Flying Geese sample when the pattern released a few months ago.

I really wanted to see this Stash buster quilt sewn up in a monochromatic color scheme because I thought it would look kind of cool. And it does! I really love how Patchwork Flying Geese looks in a limited color palette.

Patchwork Flying Geese is the latest in the Quilty Love Stash Buster quilt pattern series. You can find all of the stash buster quilt patterns in the shop here.

Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese Quilt

Patchwork Flying Geese is a quick and easy stash buster quilt pattern! It’s written around fat quarters and half yards. I thought this Paintbox Winter fat quarter bundle was perfect for this flying geese quilt because it has a mix of darks and lights.

Patchwork Flying Geese doesn’t require any background fabric. Instead you mix and match the fabrics in the fat quarter bundle. The lighter fabrics won’t get lost in lighter backgrounds since there is no background fabric.

Paintbox is a curated bundle by Elizabeth Hartman for Robert Kaufman that contains a mix of quilting cottons and essex linens. Linens add such great texture to quilts. I use essex linen a lot in my quilting. I don’t really do anything different with them other than using a smaller stitch length.

This is the small throw size so I added two extra fat quarters from my stash to this fabric bundle.

Mix and Match fat quarter quilt pattern

Patchwork Flying Geese is a mix and match fat quarter friendly quilt pattern. This means that you cut all of your pieces from the fat quarters and then you mix and match those pieces together to make the flying geese units. The mixing and the matching part is one of my favorites. It’s always fun to see how all of the fabrics are going mesh together when cut up. Plus it’s always a pretty photo op 🙂

Stash Buster quilt pattern

Patchwork Flying Geese is the third quilt pattern in the Quilty Love stash buster series. It has been so much fun designing up these quilts with your stash in mind!

The idea behind these quilt patterns is that you can find something in your own fabric stash to sew up. That might be a curated fat quarter bundle or maybe its a mix of fat quarters in your fabric stash. They are all written without background fabrics which means you can pull those fat quarters and start sewing!

Patchwork Flying Geese quilt sizes

The Patchwork Flying Geese quilt pattern comes in tons of sizes! Below are all of the sizes included in the quilt pattern.

  • Baby size
  • Small throw size
  • Medium throw size
  • Large throw size
  • Twin bed size
  • Full bed size
  • Queen bed size
  • King bed size

This Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese quilt is the small throw size.

Wavy Stitch Machine quilting

I quilted this Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese quilt myself! I don’t quilt my own quilts that often anymore due to a lack of time but it sure is fun when I can. My go-to quilting design is this wavy stitch quilting.

It’s basically straight line quilting and the machine does the wavy stitch. So you will need a walking foot and a sewing machine that has the wavy stitch. I have a Janome MC6700p and you can see the stitch I use below.

My smaller Janome also does this stitch. It struggled with the tension though so I did the multi stitch zig zag with that machine instead. I have a full tutorial here with the multi stitch zig zag quilting. The methods are the exact same with both stitches. This is a really great beginner friendly way to quilt your own quilts! It’s very forgiving and looks great on everything!

I believe my quilting lines are spaced 3/4 inch apart.

Peppered Cotton Wide back

I used one of my favorite quilt backings on the Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese quilt. That is the Peppered Cotton wide backs by e studios. Peppered Cottons are a shot cotton so they are a little more light weight.

They fray quite a bit so that would make them a little trickier to quilt with. But as a backing with no piecing I really love them! These are wide backs which mean they are wide enough for most quilt sizes and no backing piecing is required!

Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese quilt

Paintbox Patchwork Flying Geese quilt materials

Quilt Pattern: Patchwork Flying Geese quilt pattern by Quilty Love
Fabrics: Paintbox Winter fat quarter bundle by Elizabeth Hartman for Robert Kaufman
Binding: Kona cotton in the color Prussian
Backing: Peppered Cotton Wideback
Batting: Quilters Dream
Spray Baste: 505
Pieced and quilted on my Janome MC6700p

Scrappy B&C Lucky Log Cabins Quilt

I have a fun and scrappy B&C Lucky Log Cabins to share today! Lucky Log Cabins is the perfect scrappy stash quilt and I’ve been wanting to make this particular one for a while now. I had an assortment of older Bonnie and Camille fabrics in my stash just waiting for the perfect project.

I’m convinced Lucky Log Cabins works with just about any fabric! I was excited to sew it up in these Bonnie and Camille fabrics. I’ve made quite a few Lucky Log Cabin quilts and I know there are still many more to come because this is one of my favorite quilts to sew up.

Lucky Log Cabins is part of the Quilty Love Stash Buster Series. I promise you, it will help you sew through your stash! You can use so many different pre-cuts for this fun log cabin quilt.

Lucky Log Cabins is available in the Quilty Love pattern shop.

Scrappy B&C log cabin quilt

Bonnie and Camille fabrics were some of my favorites early on in my quilting adventures. The bright happy colors sucked me right in. In fact, it was Camille’s blog that inspired me to start quilting in the first place! I was searching Pinterest for T-shirt quilt instructions and I came across some of Camille’s quilts on Pinterest. That was my introduction to modern quilting. I had never seen quilts made with such happy fabrics before that.

So yes, they were my first fabric crush..haha. And since I’m not a fabric hoarder it actually bothered me that these beautiful fabrics were sitting in my stash un-sewn. So I made a plan to cut them all up and sew a few quilts.

Lucky Log Cabins is the first B&C quilt of the two I have planned. The other is a scrappy B&C postage stamp quilt.

Scrappy friendly stash quilt pattern

Lucky Log Cabins can be made using 2.5 inch strips so it was easy to start cutting strips from all of the miscellaneous sized B&C fabrics in my stash.

It turns out I had more than enough for this Lucky Log Cabins quilt plus that second quilt I have planned.

Quick and easy strip pieced quilt pattern

Lucky Log Cabins is a super fast and fun quilt to sew up. That’s why I’ve made so many. It goes together quickly with strip piecing. Plus it’s scrappy so fabrics can be placed and sewn together randomly.

These B&C scraps were too pretty not to photograph! They really have the best colors in their fabric lines! For this quilt I ended up leaving out the brighter greens and the yellows that so many of their fabric lines have.

The best part about using my B&C fabrics for this Lucky Log Cabins is that I could easily use the low volume prints. Those low volume prints can be tricky to use when you are using a lighter background. But this quilt doesn’t use any background fabrics so you can mix those lighter fabrics right in!

Machine Binding

I used some leftover B&C gingham fabrics for the binding of this Scrappy B&C Lucky Log Cabins quilt. Lately I’ve been machine binding all of my quilts. I just don’t have the time to sit and hand bind with a toddler. Plus my shoulder doesn’t like hand sewing 🙁

Machine binding is super fast and you can still get a nice finish. I have a really thorough machine binding tutorial here. I still follow that same method but attach to the front of the quilt first and then the back last. You end up with more of a hand stitched binding look on the front this way.

This scrappy quilt is such a happy quilt!

Long Arm quilting

I sent this scrappy B&C Lucky Log Cabins quilt to Knot and Thread for quilting. She chose these fun modern loops.

Peppered Cotton Wideback

This scrappy log cabin quilt is finished off with a Peppered Cotton wide back in the color Oyster. It’s a beautiful cream color. It is a very light quilt backing. I love it! Maybe not the most practical color for a quilt that will get tons of use though.

I’ve used these Peppered Cotton wide backs quite a bit now and really like them. Of course my favorite thing about them is the fact that they are a wide back. That means no piecing needed for your quilt backing.

Lucky Log Cabins quilt pattern

As I’ve already mentioned, Lucky Log Cabins is one of my favorite quilt patterns to sew up. It’s a log cabin look alike that works so well with jelly roll strips, fat quarters, fat eighths or even 1/4 yards. It’s a scrappy pattern so you really don’t need to plan any fabric placement.

I call it a log cabin look alike because it isn’t a true log cabin quilt block. A log cabin usually starts with a center “log” and you continue to add strips or “logs” around that center. This log cabin quilt is constructed with strip piecing but the end result looks similar to log cabins.

I really love when like fabrics start to touch in this quilt so you really don’t need to worry about fabric placement. The only time I consider fabric placement is when I’m making my strip sets. I do try to choose fabrics that flow together during that stage.

All the quilt sizes

Lucky Log Cabins includes instructions for eight different sizes!

  • Baby size
  • Small throw size
  • Medium throw size
  • Large throw size
  • Twin bed size
  • Full bed size
  • Queen bed size
  • King bed size

This scrappy B&C Lucky Log Cabins quilt is the medium throw size.

Materials Used:
Quilt Pattern: Lucky Log Cabins by Quilty Love
Fabrics: A mix of B&C fabrics by Moda
Pieced on my Janome MC6700p
Quilted by Knot and Thread

Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese Quilt

Today I’m sharing the Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese quilt! This soft and drapey quilt is already being used in this house and I’m pretty sure it will be the new favorite.

Patchwork Flying Geese is the most recent Quilty Love pattern and it’s a fun stash buster! Use a fat quarter bundle from your stash for this flying geese quilt. This flying geese quilt uses the no waste four at a time flying geese method for fast construction.

I sewed up this Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying geese quilt during the quilt along a few months back. Warp and Weft Wovens is a Ruby Star Society fabric line and it’s a good one! The colors, the textures…. so good! It was hard to find this Warp and Weft fabric line for a while but I believe Moda is reprinting it.

Warp and Weft is a wovens fabric line. So it’s not your usual quilting cotton. The wovens are a little thinner and take a little extra care to quilt with but the end result is a soft and drapey quilt!

Scroll on down for quilting tips when using minky as a quilt backing. I also talk about pre-washing fabrics. Should you, or shouldn’t you pre-wash.

Warp and Weft Wovens Fabric by Ruby Star Society

I missed the first release of the Ruby Star Society Warp and Weft fabric line and couldn’t find it in stock anywhere. This line is a beautiful mix of colors and textures. I love working with texture in my quilts so a line like this is super fun for me to quilt with.

Lucky for me, someone on Instagram sent me to a small online fabric shop that had Warp and Weft in stock and I was able to grab a fat quarter bundle. I believe Moda Fabrics is doing a reprint that should start showing up in shops soon! There are some bundles available on Etsy.

Ruby Star is also releasing additional lines in the Warp and Weft family. So there will be plenty of opportunities to quilt with these wovens. I must say, I’m not one to push fabrics on quilters but if you haven’t made a wovens + minky quilt yet, you should! I’m so smitten with this Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese quilt…lol.

Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese Quilt

I was excited to make a Patchwork Flying Geese quilt with this Warp and Weft fabric line because it doesn’t require any background fabric. This flying geese quilt pattern uses fat quarters only so the mix of lights and darks in this Warp and Weft Wovens line was the perfect fit.

Warp and Weft are wovens so they are a little more delicate to quilt with. I don’t shy away from any substrates in my quilting so I didn’t mind using these at all. Because they are wovens I tried to handle them carefully so I didn’t stretch them out and I also used a smaller stitch length to really help secure the seams on theses looser weave fabrics.

If you are wondering how these wovens compare to Essex linens they are much lighter and much thinner. They end up a little softer and drapier than an essex linen does. I’m a fan of quilting with both but these wovens make a softer quilt.

Using Minky as a quilt backing

Let me tell you about this quilt backing! So this is the first time using minky on a quilt. Actually it’s the second time, but we haven’t really used the first quilt yet…haha.

Let me just say that I will be using minky on every single quilt from here on out…ha. Ok, maybe not. But there is a 99.9% chance I’ll be using it on every quilt we actually plan to use. It is soft!!! And it is warm!!

I did not pre-wash my minky and it washed up just fine with the first quilt wash.

One of the best things about minky is that it comes in wide sizes! You know I love wide backs so I’m thrilled that Minky comes in 90″ widths. Also, did you know minky doesn’t wrinkle so the quilt back prep is virtually non-existent.

I will warn you that minky is messy. The raw edges shed really badly when first cut. I don’t think they continue to shed but it will leave fibers all over the place when you first cut it. I haven’t found that to be a big problem, but consider yourself warned…haha.

Using Minky – tips, tricks and care

I shared this quilt on Instagram and the quilters over there were full of really great tips when it comes to minky. I want to pass these tips along for anyone considering using minky in their quilts. Minky is a polyester meaning it is probably made with plastics.

First up, it’s going to be best to stick with better brands of Minky like Shannon Cuddle Minky. Here’s why. Minky can actually melt if it’s overheated in the dryer! Yikes! This sounds like it’s been more of a problem on cheaper minky fabrics. So it’s always going to be a good idea to dry minky on a lower heat setting or even line dry.

Skip the fabric softeners when washing your minky. Apparently they will coat the minky over time and leave it crunchy.

As far as batting goes when using minky… most quilters prefer it! Most long arm quilters require it. The minky needs the batting as a stabilizer when on the long arm. Also, sometimes the minky fibers will start popping through the front of the quilt if there is no batting. Overall, it really sounds like most quilters like their minky backed quilts to also have batting.

Use a lower loft batting to keep it nice and drapey. My quilter used 80 cotton/ 20 poly and I really like the thickness and drape of this quilt.

MINKY TIPS AND TRICKS

  • Stick with good quality minky fabrics.
  • Dry with care! Use a lower heat setting to avoid melting.
  • Skip the fabric softeners.
  • Don’t skip the batting. Use a lightweight batting or other batting replacement like muslim or flannel or something.

Pre-washing fabrics for quilting

One of the most common questions newer quilters have is should I prewash my fabrics.

The one thing I have found over the years is that pre-washing quilting fabrics is a personal preference. And personally I skip the pre-washing. I think I’ve pre-washed fabrics maybe twice.

Mostly I’m too impatient to wait for it to go through the wash but I also prefer working with fabric when it’s still nice and crisp. Plus, I use a lot of precuts. Those smaller cuts become a little trickier to pre-wash.

I will say that it is never a bad idea to pre-wash! Pre-washing will pre-shrink the fabric and probably help prevent fabrics bleeding in the quilt when it’s already sewn together. Certain colors are more prone to bleeding like reds and dark blues.

You might consider pre-washing when you are mixing substrates in a quilt. For example if you are using linens + quilting cottons or flannels + quilting cottons. Those different substrates will shrink at different rates and could cause problems as the quilt is washed in the future. For the record, I’ve made both and never pre-washed and so far haven’t had issues. But… I also haven’t washed or used those quilts a ton.

So I was curious when writing this blog post and went ahead and put this quilt through the wash. It washed up beautifully! I always use color catchers with the first wash or two just in case the fabrics bleed. But the color catchers were still completely white after this wash. That’s some impressive fabric!!

I was most curious to see what would happen with the wovens vs the minky backing. I was afraid the wovens would shrink but the minky would not. If they did shrink, it certainly wasn’t noticeable! This Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese quilt came out of the wash even softer than it went in.

The two photos below are post wash. (Every other photo in this blog post is before this quilt was washed) I was actually surprised at how little it crinkled up. That means these wovens really didn’t shrink much in the wash.

Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese quilt

Back to my favorite quilt ever… haha. Since I make so many quilts, very few of them get put into the rotation and actually used. I’ve heard about how soft and cozy quilts with wovens are so as I was making this Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese quilt, I decided it was going to actually get used.

Plus, I absolutely love the colors in this fabric line. Every quilt I’ve seen that uses it is just gorgeous. Since I knew we would end up using this one so I backed it in the minky fabric.

This is the large throw size Patchwork Flying Geese quilt. It’s a nice generous size throw.

Patchwork Flying Geese Quilt Pattern

Patchwork Flying Geese is the latest in the Quilty Love Stashbuster series. It’s a fast and fun flying geese quilt that will have you sewing through your stash. It uses fat quarters (or yardage) only. No background fabrics needed.

The quilt pattern uses the four at a time, no waste flying geese method. The flying geese are made to the exact size which can be a little tricky. This blog post is full of tips and tricks for making flying geese four at a time.

The Patchwork Flying Geese quilt pattern includes instructions for tons of sizes!

  • Baby size
  • Small throw size
  • Medium throw size
  • Large throw size
  • Twin size bed quilt
  • Full size bed quilt
  • Queen size bed quilt
  • King size bed quilt

The quilt pattern also includes cutting diagrams for fat quarters, half yards, 2/3 yards or 1 yard cuts.

Long Arm Quilting

I sent this Warp and Weft Patchwork Flying Geese quilt to Knot and Thread for quilting. She chose this beautiful quilting pantograph. I’m not sure what it’s called. I really wanted this one quilted by a long armer since we will be using it.

Materials Used:

Quilt Pattern: Patchwork Flying Geese by Quilty Love
Fabrics: Warp and Weft Wovens by Ruby Star Society
Backing: Shannon Cuddle Minky
Pieced on my Janome MC6700p
Long Arm quilted by Knot and Thread