Tag: log cabin block

Posted in knitting

Cast-on Monday: Mindless Knitting

Posted on by Laura Kate

Here I am, in a new year dedicated to stash-busting. Opening my yarn closet doors, I see that there are now only two bags of stash yarn projects. That’s good. But it makes me want to get more projects queued up. I’m looking at you, cheap acrylic skeins purchased five years ago! You were rejected by my student knitters.

I pulled out all acrylics that appear to be worsted or bulky weight and assessed their total volume. Hm, looks like it’s enough to knit a lap blanket. Searching through my knitting patterns folder, I found this image plucked off the internet some time ago.

Garn Studio Drops Design offers it patterns for free on Ravelry. Unfortunately, I didn’t download the pattern or the pattern name. Conducting an advanced search on the Ravelry database using all possible combinations of search terms, I failed to find it.

My notes say that the design reminds me of a log cabin quilt block. So, I will improvise a knit pattern, using the log cabin technique of sewing strips around a center block. In this case, the starting block is in the lower corner, not the middle.

I cast on while watching All Creatures Great and Small on PBS. Here is my progress after the first session of mindless knitting. It is a good start.

This mindless project will be ideal for taking on a late winter car trip that Bill and I have planned. It’s impossible to screw it up, even while barreling down the interstate at maximum speed.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023 Round 2: Stars

Posted on by Laura Kate

Pieceful Wendy has suggested stars, and I’m tickled about her choice. A star block will fit perfectly at the points between my rows of spools.

SAHRR Border 2

I’ve decided to adopt Wendy’s little four-point star for my own. The yellow batik fabric will form the star body and arms. I’ll vary the construction by using three rectangles and one square with stitch-n-flip triangles sewn on. These pieces are then sewn around the center as in log cabin block construction.

Test Block completed

The result is slightly wonky star arms – a look I find sort of charming.

Stars in the heavens like snowflakes: No two alike.

And here is my quilt with the addition of rounds two and three.

While I’m happy with the result, it’s clear that I will need a plain border to give breathing room to the center. I’ll continue with the little sparks of yellow throughout the design, hoping that this device will create unity and lots of rhythm.

Feb 3 – Border sewn together and added to the center block.

Don’t forget to check out the work of other participants at the InLinkz party.

SAHRR Border 2
Posted in quilting

Finished Object Friday – Quilting

Posted on by Laura Kate

After three months, I have finished the pet-friendly quilt that started with this fabric.

Inspired by Rayna Gillman’s improvisational piecing technique and using a combination of log cabin and strip pieced squares, I designed a pair of blocks I call Dog House, Cat Barn.

The blocks finish at 12 inches square. But how can they turn into a bed quilt? After mulling it over for awhile and making several sketches on graph paper, I found that I could fit four blocks across five rows to come up with a twin-size quilt. To create balance, I staggered the rows by four inches with a spacing strip, alternating between left side and right side every row.

I also felt that the balance would improve if the center row was different. Thus was conceived the Pet Condo construction project in “mid-town,” (if you will permit my flight of fancy.)

Four inches of sashing in a grey polka-dot fabric between the rows made a “street,” giving the animal neighbors a nice boulevard for walking over to visit. With my concept complete, I re-named the quilt Animal Friends.

Oh, another group of animal friends were introduced via the background fabric: Our hardworking and very dear bees.

The Animal Friends quilt measures 57 by 84 inches. It was quilted with a combination of walking foot “stitch in the ditch” and free motion stitching on my Bernina.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR Challenge #6 – Almost Done

Posted on by Laura Kate

This week’s assignment is Log Cabin block. I’m a fan of this block and find it useful in improvisational quilts and as a background for art quilts. When I woke up this morning, I had a good idea for incorporating this block into my design. So I got right to work on the challenge.

Because I have not yet sewn the wonky stars border on, I can still incorporate the log cabin blocks into it. My plan is to use the pale blue fabric and the flowered batik fabric to make four log cabins and attach them in the corners of the wonky star border. For the final challenge (whatever it may be) I will use the flowered batik as my primary fabric. This will tie what has come before to what comes next. Follow along and you will see.

Here are my four log cabins.

I used a one and one half inch center and cut the light and dark strips to finish at 3/4 inch. These are three rows of each color, giving me a finished block of 6 inches – the same as my light blue star border.

Next I got out my fabric paint and added a metallic motif to each center square.

I think they look like eyes in the heavens.

Laying each block with the pale blue to the inside and the batik fabric to the outside, I get this effect:

Lower right corner
Lower left corner

With the log cabin blocks done, I return to building the quilt sandwiches for the four sides. They will be about 12 inches wide each. This includes enough allowance for the quilting. At this point, I am expecting my quilt to finish out at around 60 inches square – a good size to use as a lap blanket.

Don’t forget to check in with the others who are building round robin quilts. They are showing a tremendous variety of styles and some ingenious solutions to the challenges.

Posted in quilting

Animal Friends Project Update

Posted on by Laura Kate

Block assembly on this quilt is done! Animal friends, otherwise known as Dog-house Cat-barn, is an improvisational quilt using string-pieced strips around log-cabin style center patches of dogs and cats. The whole thing was inspired by a delightful black and white print, which you can see clearly, above. I decided to make a twin-size quilt which required 12 inch blocks, each assembled from four 6 inch patches.

The rows will be spaced apart with 4 inch strips in a gray print.

I have started the quilting with the third row, which features pet condos. 🙂

Pet Friendly Housing, quilted with just the walking foot.

Later today – I finished quilting this row before dinner was ready. It went very well. With a bit of effort, I could have this quilt done in a few weeks.