Block · Strips and log cabin
Log Cabin
Strips sewn round a centre square, light on one half and dark on the other: one of the best-loved blocks since the 1860s.
- Other names
- Bjælkehytte
- Known from
- USA, Canada and Britain, from the 1860s; very popular 1870–1910
- First known print
- Named at the Ohio State Fair in 1863. An English needlework book of 1882 calls it "Canadian patchwork".
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Family
- Strips and log cabin
- Difficulty
- Easy · Squares and rectangles only
- Grid
- 7 × 7 cells
History
The block is strips, "logs", sewn round a centre square, often a red one. The oldest written traces are mentions of log cabin quilts at the Ohio State Fair in 1863 and 1868 and an Iowa diary of 1866, found by the quilt historians Virginia Gunn and Barbara Brackman.
Many early blocks were sewn onto a foundation fabric, and those of the 1860s and 70s were often of fine wool. In the 1880s silk log cabins were in fashion. In England a needlework book of 1882 said the technique was known in Canada and new in England.
The name suited its time: the log cabin was Abraham Lincoln's image in the 1860 campaign. Brackman sees that as a coincidence, not the block's origin. Who sewed the first one, nobody knows.
How it is used
Each block is split diagonally into a light and a dark half, which makes it versatile: turn the blocks and the whole quilt's pattern appears. Barn Raising (rings out from the middle) and Straight Furrows (wide diagonal stripes) are classic settings, in QuiltCrafter the turnings "Rings" and "Wide stripes".
Lay the strips in pairs on opposite sides of the centre instead of round it, and it becomes Courthouse Steps. With the centre in a corner it becomes Half Log Cabin.
Quilts with the block
Log Cabin, light and dark
4 × 4 blocks · 62" × 62"
Log Cabin, Barn Raising
6 × 6 blocks · 69" × 69"
Log Cabin, Straight Furrows
6 × 6 blocks · 69" × 69"
Related blocks
Sources
The text is our own, written from the sources below. Photos of old quilts with the block are in the museums' collections.
- Article Barbara Brackman: Log Cabin: How Old Is the Name? (2010)
- Article Barbara Brackman: Civil War Quilts: Log Cabin (2011)
- Article Barbara Brackman: Cat Mummies & Log Cabins (2021)
- Museum International Quilt Museum: American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870–1940
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Log Cabin, Courthouse Steps variation
- Museum International Quilt Museum: Underground Railroad Quilts?