The First Birthday Blocks

OK, some I'm overly ambitious, and decided to try and make two blocks for everyone in my Birthday Block Swap.  Mainly as an "Aw, poop!" back up plan, if something should come out not quite roses.

aphoenixrain requested wonky log cabin blocks, 13" square, in blues and greens.  Now, I've never made a log cabin, wonky or not, in my life.  Still, I refused to be intimidated!  I did a quick review of Quilt Dad's tutorial and got going.

As I made these blocks, I was tickled by the sheer range of fabrics, which actually encompass the full range of my quilting 'career'.  As long as I've made quilts, I've purchased fabric as my joy button lit up and urged my lizard brain to acquire accordingly.  And yes, now that I'm several years into quilting, there are several fabrics in my stash that make me go, "What was I thinking?"  Will I get rid of them?  Probably not.  I do enough scrap quilting that I can discreetly work those fabrics out of my stash without feeling awful.

Also while making these blocks, my brain wanted to go horribly Type A the entire time.  A little voice kept screaming at me, "You can't be doing this right!  And those fabrics don't match!!"  At some point, I simply told that voice to stuff a sock in it and proceeded to blindly grab from the stash and simply evaluate the fabric for how 'true' a green or blue it was, as subjective as that is.

I actually quite pleased by the blocks - I really thought I'd hate them once was all said and done.  LOL!  But anyway, I thought I'd post a photo of my staging area as I began the piecing process:

As you can see, I set it up so that I could simply swivel my chair around and flatten out the seams as I went.  It worked quite well, and I'll have to remember this when I finally get around to getting a table for ironing.

Speaking of ironing...  That large stack of fabrics on the very right edge of the photo?  Yeah, those are all in desperate need of a visit from the ironing fairy.  And yes, all of them were purchased in 2009.  A very quick estimate, based on there being 44 unique cuts of fabric, with an average purchase of 2 yards per fabric, with adjustments for FQs and remnants...  About 75 total yards of fabric.

The mind boggles.

Thus, my new New Year's Resolution...  To make more quilts, faster.

EDIT:  As I posted this, I noticed that my total blog post count for last year is 34.  I think I'll set a goal of 75 posts for this year.