Little Elements of Fire

The „4 Elements“ have been this year’s summer exhibition theme of my quilt group. I have been thinking about a red and white log cabin quilt for quite some time and choose to use that idea for the Elements theme.

I love to work with old/vintage cotton though this time the fabric was rather new; t used to be the curtain for my Berlin apartment a few years ago. 3,80 m high walls, big old windows and therefore lots of white cotton….

The red fabric is silk I bought from IKEA two years ago. And I have to admit I regretted using it. It is not colour fast especially when washed with cold / timid water; it suffered from the hot ironing temperature needed for the cotton and the edges frayed a lot.

The batting is the cotton batting 275 from Freudenberg. It is not very heavy; it looks a little bit like it has been felted which I why it does not loose its shape even after several washing or heavy use. Hand quilting it was pretty good too.

It all started with log cabin squares without measuring their size just sewing one after the other whenever I felt like it. Later I had to trim quite a few of them to size.

When I have already finished many of the squares I started planning the quilt. Thinking about it size, the amount of squares needed for it in the end and especially making up my mind about how to quilt it.

With the little doll quilt I learned how the quilting lines can change a quilts appearance and with the graphic strictness of the log cabin I wanted to add a little “chaos”, some softer lines to my quilt. That is why I went with an all over quilt pattern with circles and half circles to contrast the log cabin squares, again.




Quilted but not finished yet.




The finished quilt, photographed in front of a window with the sun shining through it. It is beautiful (I am biased I know…) and very comfy.