December block: Crazy log cabins

First off, I'm going to apologize. When Jennifer said last December to declare which months wouldn't be the best to host, I did not connect the fact that as December arrives this year, I will actually be in Australia for a vacation (just Greg and I!!), and planning this blog post fell to the wayside as I got my desk cleared off at work, packed myself, and the kids for their stay at Grandma's.

So, I'm going to set up the block and give free rein to anyone who wants to go ahead and be done with it. After I'm back in the middle of December I will catch up and give more examples to anyone who wishes. I am in no particular rush for these, so feel free to postpone if December gets in your way (I'm sure everyone will have other sewing they may want to do).

Here we go: so, if you liked the colours in Anthea's November block (which I very much did!), you will probably like this one too.  I'm going for soft blues, greens, browns and off-whites/cream, with a bit of soft orange (but not peach) if you happen to have it.

I had been thinking about shapes, and felt drawn to rectangles, and so I'm going to be asking for a rectangular log cabin with a big crazy pieced centre

 So, ideally, you'd take pieces of your blues, greens and browns and crazy piece a rectangular-ish centre that ends up being about 6-7 inches wide by 18-19 inches tall - it doesn't have to be exact and any quadrilateral shape is fine (aka, a wonky rectangle).  the crazy pieces can be as big or as small as you want - I'm just looking to showcase the wide variety of prints that everyone has, so whatever looks good to your eye is great. Here is an example of crazy piecing... though your pieces do not have to be that small! http://alliesinstitches.blogspot.ca/2010/10/crazy-crumb-piecinga-tutorial.html
Then take 3 inch strips of your creams/off-whites and do one round of log cabin, starting with the skinny end.

In this series of pictures, I show a solid piece of blue fabric where the crazy pieced centre would be.

And then you can see how I put the sides on starting at the left and going counterclockwise.  In this picture they are wonky but you can just leave them at their full width and I can trim them later.

I hope this makes sense, and if it doesn't then I will try to look in and
answer questions in the comments as I find wifi. 

I will be mostly in Sydney and then driving the great ocean road out of Melbourne the WA folks, but if  anyone has suggestions of fabric stores, I'd love a recommendation!

Micaela