Quilt Qua

With Valentine’s Day not far off, this month’s quilt idea is a relatively simple log cabin.

The key to the design in a log cabin quilt or wall hanging is to determine how you will lay out the logs in each block, and then how to place the blocks in your quilt.

The logs in this quilt are a small ½ inch wide, and each block is 3 ½ inches square.

 

This quilt was my first attempt at a Log Cabin quilt. It looked so easy, and the pattern said to cut 1 inch strips and then add them to each block and cut off the excess.

That sounded pretty easy, too. So, I started with 20 inch long strips, sewed a white strip and red strip together and cut 1 inch hunks off to get the center two squares of the red-white blocks.

 

From there, I took a white strip and sewed on a bunch of red-white square pairs. Once the white strip was full of red-white pairs, I cut the white strip to fit the square pairs. I continued adding logs in the same fashion – sewing the strips onto the block, then cutting the fabric strip to match the block.

 

Although it seemed like a great plan, in the final analysis, it really wasn’t the best way to get square blocks.

 

As you might imagine, because of the differences in the fabrics, some of them stretched more than others, and my final blocks range in size from 3 inches to 3 ½ inches! Part way through, I realized that this was becoming a problem, so I switched to measuring the logs before I added them to the partially-completed blocks.

Another lesson learned!

Happy Quilting!