Log Cabin Quilt Pattern Variations

Let's look at a few other simply variations that are easy to sew. If you look at this quilt here, you can see that I pieced a center of the logs instead of the novelty print that we were just working with. So here is a four and a half inch unfinished flower block in the center. And light log is sewn on two sides, dark logs sewn on two sides. So basically the same type of thing that we've sewn before only using a pieced block in the center. And I want you to look at these two blocks right here. They're the same block, just with a different orientation. And the one thing we talked about with novelty print is having your design always facing the same direction by where you start sewing your first log. For something like this, these logs were made exactly the same. So the orientation of the first log is on the left side of the flower in both of these cases. But here you can see that the flower is in a different orientation and for a design like this, that works perfectly fine. So you don't always have to be changing the position of your first log to keep the orientation the same if you'd like a design that flows like this. Another thing that's a little bit different about this one is that there's only two rows of lights and two rows of darks. So there's no real hard and cut fast rules that you have to follow when you're making a log cabin, you can just make them in whatever size finished block you want by whatever number of strips you'd like to have on there. So let's look at another one. Okay for this quilt, you'll notice that there is a pieced star in the center of this log cabin block here and a little bit different than we've talked about before this one doesn't have definite light side and a definite dark side. It's got a red side and a blue side. So a little bit different from before. And in this block right next to it, here's my log cabin, but this time it's in the center of the piece block as opposed to the piece block in the center, where again I have a light side and a dark side. So the more the traditional log cabin block. So here, this quilt is these two different variations here. And you can tell, I noticed I hand quilted this one. So you can tell it's a long time ago because I don't have time for hand quilting anymore. Okay, let's look at another one. Kind of along the same lines as the last one. This one has a different star that's pieced in the center of the log cabin. And again, traditional in that it's light on one side and dark on the other side. But the difference being here is that there's squares in the corners of the log cabins right here. So this is more of a chimney and cornerstone variation of a log cabin block so that the squares continue in the star blocks themselves and just work out to the ends of the logs. But again, light on one side, dark on the other, just a variation where the blocks rotate across the quilt. And if you can see the center block here this is actually a little log cabin block where I've got a square in the center, but each of the logs again has a corner sewn in just like these logs only on a smaller scale with no pieced star in the center. Another variation that's really easy to do. Now, all the ones we've talked about so far have had the same size strips on the light side and the same size on the dark side. If you look at this variation here, on one side these strips all finish at a half inch. And on the other side, they all finish at one inch. So the effect of sewing these blocks together is you'll end up with lines that look more curved than straight. That's what you'll see here. So that's kind of fun and simple to do. And you'll notice also that there's a lot more rows of logs. There's five rows on each side, as opposed to the three that we were working with before. Now, these are just a few blocks that I've sewn where I've taken one element out of a traditional block and replaced it with a log cabin. So I've kind of looked at the log cabin. You can see like a triangle that's formed in the center. So this star design could have had a triangle patch in here and I've replaced it with a log cabin. The same type of thing in the center of this block, but this variation where you have a center square and then your logs are on opposite sides is a courthouse steps variation of a log cabin. So a little bit different. It almost looks like a quarter square triangle if you drew a diagonal lines to the center of it. So I do a little different effect there. And the third one. Different colorings of the traditional log cabin, but I put the colors in the log cabin on the opposite sides of the star points. So a little bit different, you can replace parts of your traditional blocks with log cabins like these and you'll have to figure the size of your logs based on the size that you want your finished patch to be. Now here's some more variations where I've used a log cabin block to replace a patch in a quilt block. So if you look at this square right here, this is a traditional quilt block that would have had maybe two triangles or a solid square in the center. And I've replaced it with a log cabin that I've colored half brown to match one side of the block and half blue to match the other side. So a little bit different here. Now we're combining log cabin blocks with traditional blocks. And this one has the same thing where I've taken a traditional block like a bear's pop block that you see right here and repay replaced the center square with a log cabin. And this one is a little bit different instead of having a solid square in the center, I've got a half square triangle so that all my dark side looks more like it flows in one triangle here. And then I've just got just regular patches here for the rest of my block. Another one using the same thing as the star quilt here where I've taken the center patch and used a courthouse steps variation of the log cabin where the patches are added across from each other and placed the colors of the log cabin opposite colors on the star blocks. So for the red star points have blue in the center of the log cabin and the blue star points have red. So it just adds an interesting variation to your quilt designs when you can replace an element in your block with a log cabin. And here's another example, same type of thing here where I've got a log cabin. This is the block, the whole block itself and these log cabin, if you had made the traditional block, these would be triangles in both of these light triangle dark triangle to make a block here. So I've got four triangles that I've replaced with log cabin blocks in the center of this block. So you can see it adds some really nice interest and diversity to your blocks and something fun to do with your log cabins.