Photo-tastic Log Cabin Quilt

Last summer I was contacted by a woman named Lori who was looking for someone to make a quilt for her daughter. The quilt was to be a Christmas present and Lori wanted it to feature photos from her daughter’s wedding. This project didn’t immediately strike me as one that would fit my style–and I find it painful to work outside of my style–but I figured talking to Lori about her desires wouldn’t hurt–I might take the project or I might be able to point her in the direction of a quilter who was better suited to make the sort of quilt she wanted.

Well, as it turned out, when Lori came to my studio and looked the my quilts that I had pulled as possible starting places for the project, she was quite convinced that her daughter would love my work. And, when I looked at the photos Lori wanted to include, which were not of people, but of objects and views, I was able to see how I could work the photos into my patchwork.

In that first meeting with Lori, we decided to base the quilt on by Lotta Log Cabins quilt.

Lori and I worked together to find a starting palette for the fabric:

Before long, I had a digital copy of the wedding photos and I resized and edited them into one big image, to be printed at Spoonflower.com

I made all the photos 3″ tall or 3″ wide, depending on their orientation, so that I could easily work them into the logs of the log cabins. Once the photo fabric was in hand, I started cutting into the fabric and making my log cabins…

The blocks have a photo in the center.


Once I got going, I counted out and pre-planned the  images to be the centers, and started putting images in the logs, too.


As usual, I used the design wall throughout the process, to keep the work balanced and to help with fabric selection and placement.

Once the top was finished, I quilted using my favorite squared stipple.

I’m afraid I never captured an image of the final, finished quilt due to my being heavily pregnant and then mothering a newborn, but I can tell you that Lori was very pleased with the finished quilt and emailed me after Christmas to say that the quilt had made their holiday perfect! How cool!