Log Cabin Christmas Tree

This morning I woke up at 3am with a start - I knew exactly what I wanted to make!

A bit of background - my uncle Geoff died in January this year, of Prostrate Cancer. He died at home, but spent the previous 6 weeks in a fantastic unit at the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford where the staff were just awesome. Being in hospital over Christmas is gloomy for patient and visitors and I wanted to do something for them for next year.

I woke up thinking of a log cabin Christmas tree: each block made roughly 10x8, then trimmed to a wonky 8inches tall, by about 6 inches wide, where the centre of the block is either a bauble (snowball block) or a lighted candle (coloured centre strip, topped with a small elongated yellow snowball?) and all the strips are shades of medium to dark green. These would be arranged in a triangle to represent the tree. This would be too narrow at the top to hang, so dark blue blocks (for the sky, maybe some with yellow stars in the centre?) at the top and then white blocks at the bottom for snow would form the sides to keep a rectangular shape so the whole quilt could be hung up.

I started today to look at the greens I've got in my stash - hum, not many! I can buy some, but I dreamt this in loads of different greens as a tree has so many different hues.

So I wondered if I could change this to an appeal - an appeal for either fabrics or donated blocks. Then it occurred to me that other people might like to do the same thing, so maybe it would work to swap blocks - you send me a few, and I'll send you a few back: that way we get some variety

I haven't thought it all the way through, but I am so excited by the idea that I have ignored my to-do list (again!!!) to make the first block, and here it is - just a hundred or so more to go!




EDITED 3rd August

Here is the quilt that inspired me, by Nadine Leroy Bohy, seen in the May/June Magic Patch (should be rotated clockwise -ooops!)