Log Cabin Love

I've been really enjoying making log cabin blocks recently. So simple, so satisfying to make, and so appealing in their history! Traditionally, log cabin blocks were assembled with a red fabric centre, symbolizing a blazing hearth at the centre of the home. I just love the thought of quilters years ago stitching blessings, prayers, and hopes for a happy home into their log cabin quilts, and I love the thought of carrying on that tradition today! Plus, you can have great fun with creating different patterns in your quilt, depending on how you organize your strips of fabric for the outer 'log' pieces. And, each little block is a great scrap buster to boot!

I had my first introduction to the humble log cabin block at Bee Blessed, a charity quilting bee in which I'm involved.  (There's a great picture of the fruit of our log cabin labours if you scroll down a little bit!) I had such fun putting these blocks together, that I decided I'd make a log cabin quilt of my own for friends who are getting married soon. I didn't have quite enough scraps in my stash to make a whole quilt, so I picked up a Half Moon Modern jelly roll by Moda, knowing that I wanted to make this particular quilt very bright and colourful. When I got the jelly roll, I cut up a few of the red strips to use as the centres of my log cabin blocks and then got started piecing everything together. Initially, I thought I'd keep each square one colour, with darks on one side and lights on the other, so that I could create one of the cool patterns I referred to above. While I kept to that plan throughout, I found that, by the time I had all the squares completed, I just wasn't happy with the overall result and decided to add some sashing and borders to create a colour block effect with 4 red squares in the top right corner, 4 yellow/orange squares in the top left corner, 4 aqua/blue squares in the bottom right corner, and 4 green squares in the bottom left corner. 




Here's the end result:

I quilted everything with a variegated thread that, at times, both blended and contrasted with the quilt top blocks, producing a really cool merging/diverging effect. (I think so, anyway!) I paired that with a light cream thread on my bobbin, as the quilt back was a pieced one comprised mainly of off-white cotton and one panel of extra log cabin blocks. Basically, I wasn't completely sure about my maths in getting the back panel of log cabins to match up with a panel on the front, and I didn't want the variegated thread to make the mismatch too obvious on the back! Also, though, I thought the contrast with the majority white backing would be too much. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!) Here's a view of the back:

Finally, I stitched together all the leftover strips of fabric to create the binding, et voila! The very last thing I added was a (slightly wonky) label, for posterity's sake, like! (You can just see it in the top right corner of the photo above.)


x Tina