Hello English Paper Piecers,

This is the first day of my EPP diary where I want to record each of my EPP (and related) projects and note what I have discovered i.e. anything useful.

This book has a simple log cabin design

I decided I would like to try a Log Cabin design and make something very small and simple, a mini quilt about five and quarter inches square (13 cms) . I have a book called ’20 Little Amish Quilts’ on my bookshelf and one of the featured quilts is a simple log cabin.

This is the pattern for the log cabin that is in the book This page shows you which templates to look for elsewhere in the book.

The log cabin of templates I arranged. In this picture you can see the marks where I have tacked the fabric to the shapes. I lost an F and had to make another one. I didn’t find it again until I had finished sewing.

I chose this because the book also has a very useful centre section of shapes that you can photocopy and cut out to serve as EPP templates.  I photocopied the pages I needed for the right templates – K F U V and W – and made sure I had two of each shape.

One of the pages of templates

Once I had all these cut out, I arranged them on my desk in the log cabin design.  I numbered them so that I would get the order right when I started sewing. (In this photo I have mixed up 7 & 8. The numbering should be the other way around but the shapes are the same so it doesn’t really matter.)

After this I chose my fabric. I wanted to put a dog in the centre and call my quilt ‘Mr Pickles In the Cabin’, so I began with a fussy cut of a dog’s face and then chose colours to complement it: ochres and greys and blacks and whites. I chose a solid, a crosshatch, a chevron design, a spot and a scatter print of bones. I also fussy cut some paw prints to emphasise the doggy theme.

‘Mr Pickles in the Cabin’, after each shape has been covered, basted and sewn together.

I used a low loft polyester wadding and a backing that wrapped around to the front, creating a frame with mitred edges.

This was my first try at quilting as the quilts I made in the past were either tied or unfinished, and, although it was easier than I thought it would be to sew through the layers, it was hard to keep the stitches straight and even in size.  When I finished I felt my quilting stitches looked like tacking stitches, even though they were much smaller and coloured to match the ochre patches. Next time I will try smaller stitches and a more creative pattern to try to get away from this.

Here is the finished quilt before I add a hanger (and a tube on the back to support the hanger)  and maybe some beads dangling from the bottom.

and here it is, all done. Ta da!