Chevron Log Cabin

 

I found myself wanting to make a quilt for a particular reason, and it didn't take long to decide that I wanted to make a log cabin quilt out of a brown batik jelly roll I had.  I had thought I was going to use the jelly roll to make the New Year's Star, but this seemed like a better use for it.  I had a look at a couple of patterns for making log cabin blocks out of jelly rolls, particularly this one by Carol Thelen which made 10" finished blocks, but ultimately I decided I liked Donna Jordan's version better, which made 14" finished blocks.  This quilt used the majority of a jelly roll, and while I didn't mind the size, I wanted to do it a bit differently.  Instead of the 3 x 4 block setting with borders, wanted to do a 4 x 5 block setting with no borders.    This would give me a slightly smaller quilt which was fine by me.  But it would also require more fabric than was available in one jelly roll.  It was time to do some maths.

I figured out from the pattern that it would take 1.5 dark strips to complete the dark half of each log cabin block, so I'd need 30 dark strips to make the 20 log cabin blocks I needed.  For the lights, one light strip is used to cut the four largest pieces, so for 20 blocks I'd need 20 strips.  The smaller two light pieces per block were cut out of just 2 strips total for the original quilt, but I'd need 4 for mine.  I'd also need two strips to cut the 20 centre squares for each block.

Maths done, and my jelly roll separated into dark strips, light strips and centre square strips, figured out I'd need to buy about a half metre of dark and a metre of light to cut into 2.5" strips to add to the jelly roll.  I had 42 strips, but my math indicated I needed 56 total.  I ended up getting a half metre of two different lights to mix it up a bit.

Once I had all the strips I needed, that was the hard work done.  I had no issues cutting all the strips into sizes required using my Stripology ruler.  And then it was on to the fun sewing all 20 centre squares onto the first log cabin part, then the second, and the third, randomly selecting colours from the relevant piece size as I went.  It has been such a long time since I sewed something with nothing but squares and rectangles that this went together really quickly and easily.

I'd already knew that I wanted to make the chevron layout using the blocks, so after spending some time laying them out and rearranging them, it was easy enough to sew them together.  And I'd also already decided that I was going to do some simple walking foot quilting, and just follow the chevron pattern.  I did, however, use two different threads on the top, a dark grey I had leftover from the lone star quilt for the dark chevrons, and a beige-ish one that I'd used on the ruby jubilee. 

Compared to many quilts I've made recently, or am currently making, or plan to make, this one was really simple and straightforward.  And fun.  And it helped me to decide what to do with a half layer cake I had laying around the place.  So stay tuned for that one.