Log Cabin Free Motion Quilting

Hello Dear Friends and Readers, I have been pondering about how to quilt a Log Cabin design quilt.  I have done some reading about this in the past and suspected that there may be some difficulties generally due to the number of seams involved.

Previously I had mentioned that some Log Cabin quilts were made in the folded style.  Therefore the quilt top would have been rather thick.  Historically, I believe some log cabin quilts were tied due to the amount of fabric and seams.

So with some of this information in mind I wondered if I would have difficulty?

Then comes the design.  Obviously with the light and dark shadowing of a log cabin it would be good to capitalise on that.

On the other hand, when quilts are very scrappy, sometimes the quilting is a bit lost anyway…..

I have previously posted this log cabin quilt here.

Lessons in Log Cabin Blocks

So with all this in mind, here is how I decided to quilt this Round Log Cabin Quilt.

I decided to begin from the Centre and quilt Sashiko Clamshells into the dark areas.  I have quilted one quadrant at a time.  These are all done free motion so they are by no means perfect, however the overall look is consistent and the Centre is well stabilized.  And its good to remember that most often, finished is better than perfect.

For all the light areas, I decided to free motion quilt Double Feathers.  The Double Feathers is just an extra loop inside each feather loop.  Maybe some might consider it almost a Paisley style.  Anyhow it richly texturlises the light areas and gives a circular flow to the round aspect of the quilt.

I continued the Sashiko Clamshell pattern for the rest of the dark areas doing only one quadrant at a time.  I did do some outline quilting before commencing, to stabilize the quilt and keep it flat.  Also it “sections off” parts of the quilt making it easier to quilt it.

All of the quilting was done on my Singer 201K C1948.  It’s a pretty fast machine.  You can read more about how I set this machine upo initially for the purpose of Free Motion Quilting.  By the way, I did not find that there was any more difficulty in quilting the log cabin in terms of the amount of seams.  In fact, it is probably easier than quilts which have areas of up to eight intersecting areas like a pinwheel design.

Vintage Singer 201K and FMQ

Here is the machine at work.  And for those of you who like details, this quilt has a 100 percent cotton batting and I have used a Rasant thread for the quilting.  I find it’s an easy thread to use and more importantly its available in a huge range of colours at my local sewing shop.

For the gingham border, I just did a simple cross hatch pattern.  This was also free motion.

Here you can see the texture of the quilting.

The binding was stitched on this Singer 66K.

I sent this quilt to my son for his birthday.  He is really loving using it as his couch throw.  It adds a lovely warmth of colour to the room and a place of comfort and relaxation for a weekend afternoon nap.

Isn’t it amazing what seemly ordinary scraps can make?

Happy stitching to you all.

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If you are having trouble getting motivated to sew, you may also enjoy this post.

Quilting Patchwork Mojo!

All the best,

Susie