One of the cool things about log cabin squares is that the way you arrange them creates a totally different pattern. The squares themselves “read” as if they are made up of two triangles, a light and a dark, especially when mixed with a bunch of others. As with all quilts, even though these were gifts, I also made them for myself: so I could learn how to do this technique, so I could learn what looks great and what might not. So I decided to arrange the squares differently for each quilt. There are a bunch of different ways to put log cabins together, but I liked the flow of light and dark that these two make.

If you are making a quilt with log cabins, my suggestion is to not wing the assembly of the squares into a finished quilt top. Put them on a design wall if you have one, or arrange them on the floor. It is worth the time, especially if your squares are scrappy. This is the final way you create balance with all of those disparate patterns and/or colors, so take some time to get the squares in the right order. I find that even once I think they are perfect (no repeated fabric touching, for example), if I take a photo of the layout and then look at it on my phone, I see it differently and change a few more squares.

Once you have the squares arranged the way you want, sew the blocks into rows and then the rows into the finished top. I ironed the seams open but I’m not sure if there is a right or wrong way to iron log cabins.

After I finished the two log cabin quilt tops, I cleaned up my sewing space, organized all of the scraps I had left over (seriously…I think I could make ten more baby log cabin quilts), and then agonized! I really wanted to freeform quilt these quilts. I think it would’ve enhanced the bigger pattern the arrangement of the squares creates. I did some Google searching for free-form quilting tips, I checked out and read two books about it, and I even did some practice free-form quilting. But in the end, I knew I am not skilled enough at free form to make it look good, so I went with some straight line quilting instead. (I think these two quilts might just be the thing that pushes me over the edge: I might just be ready for a new sewing machine! Any recommendations?)

As I made these quilts, I started thinking of them with names. And as all of the Cool Quilting Bloggers name their quilts, I’m going to go ahead and start naming all of my quilts, too. (I actually also started a draft of a poem about quilting, which is really a poem about grief, history, time, female ancestors, and if I manage to finish it it will be titled “Grief Cabins.”) So! Here are the finished scrappy log cabin baby quilts, with their individual names:

Midnight Feeding

I think the arrangement of this one is called Barn Raising. I’m calling it Midnight Feeding because I spent some late nights working on it, and because the colors of the back feel more like night colors. I LOVE the little pops of purple sprinkled throughout this quilt. I had to shop a little bit for some more purples, and I discovered that quilting is similar to scrapbooking: It’s REALLY hard to find good purples. (I like cool instead of warm purples.) I showed this one to a woman at the fabric store I’ve started to become friendly with, and she said something similar: “Oh, I love the purple on this! Not enough people think of purple as a boy color, but it really works with blue.”

It has scraps from quilts I’ve made for Haley, Jake, Nathan, Kaleb, and Elliot. Some of the logs are from my mom’s stash, as are all the hearth squares. Some of the logs come from baby quilts I’ve made for friends and neighbors. Some, I confess, are new fabrics.

I quilted it by first quilting in the ditch around each of the hearth squares and then with echoing diamond lines. When these lines got to a hearth square, I didn’t quilt through it, so the squares are a little bit more highlighted.

I pieced the backing out of two different flannels. (I love a pieced backing!) The dinosaur print I bought when Kaleb was about two. I made a pair of PJs for him out of it but had a ton left over. The polka dots I got the day I took the top into the fabric store and the colors matched so well, it was a happy coincidence!

I made this for the baby of my niece Hilary; he was born three weeks ago.

Imagination

The arrangement of this one is called Fields and Furrows. The light/dark diagonal lines just make me so happy! I love the little details of the quilt. Each of the hearth squares is different. There are sharks, kittens, a cowboy paisley, a few wordy pieces. Since I pieced this so slowly, I tried to sort of match the fabrics thematically a little bit, like there’s a sheriff’s star print with the cowboy paisley, and bubbles with a shark print. I kept picturing the baby I made it for, when he was a little bit bigger, looking at the different prints and making up stories about them. (Realizing that that idea is me projecting my childhood thought patterns onto someone else entirely!)

A lot of the scraps I used for this quilt came from my attempt to build up my blue stash, so some of it was new. There is a dark blue flannel that came from my mom’s stash and a few other blue pieces. (I wanted to put more of her stash into this quilt, because it was for her great grandson, but her taste in blues was so different from mine, and she almost always chose a cream base instead of a white one.) But I also used some of the fabric I’ve been accumulating for a quilt I’m making soon for Kaleb.

Again, I agonized over how to quilt this, but went with two diagonal lines ½” apart, again after stitching in the ditch around the hearth squares. On one of the squares (the second one I quilted) I accidentally quilted around the square made by the first row of logs. I considered unpicking it….but I decided it just added to the random/scrappy aspect of the quilt.

I had planned on backing it with a solid blue minky, but when I found this fabric I couldn’t resist, because the niece whose baby I made it for is a country fan. And because the baby’s name is Gus, and Gus is a character in one of my dad’s favorite novels, Lonesome Dove, which happens to be about cowboys, so. I realize it’s sort of a mix of two radically different styles, the modern improve feel of the front and the comfy, country feel of the back…but somehow, I think it is OK.

I made this one for my niece Jacqui’s baby, who was born two months ago but who I finally got to meet (and give his quilt to) on Monday.

There’s always a moment when I’m making a quilt for someone else that my husband gets a bit annoyed with me. He sometimes sees my quilty efforts as over the top. And sometimes it is a lot of time spent on a quilt for a baby who might not ever know me very well. But…I think I make the quilts as much for myself as I do for the babies. A person only needs so many quilts in her house, and right now I have no babies or grandbabies of my own to quilt for. But I also make them because of a quilt someone made for me, when I was a baby. My great aunt Myrle made a pink whole cloth quilt for me. It has a lamb quilted on the fabric, with a bright blue eye, and expertly finished with a white cord binding. This quilt is an inherent part of many of my childhood memories, but Aunt Myrle? I don’t remember her at all. So I like to think of her, making that quilt for me, but also for my mom. It doesn’t matter, necessarily, if the baby becomes a person in the future who knows me well. Maybe just knowing that someone cared about him and about his mom enough to make something for him will be a sweetness to him, as that pink quilt (I still have it in my linen closet) is for me.