Log Cabin 411 - Making it Fun - Episode #74

hey gang whether you're new to quilting or you've been doing it for a long long time there's something we can all learn from the log cabin block let me walk you through some of the steps let's get started that is right everybody happy 2021 i know i've already put out one video but welcome to the new year i am rob appel from michael miller fabrics welcome to making it fun i do all kinds of really well i think they're really cool sewing and quilting and craft videos right here if it's your first time welcome welcome welcome we have a great block of the month that just started last week and this week what i want to do is just play a bit with education and take a traditional quilt block the log cabin one of the very first teach you all a little bit of the history of the block teach you the simple breakdowns of the block and then we're going to just take this and expand it and have a ton of fun so i'm just going to dive right into the supplies you can see already on the table i've got tons of strips of fabric that i've already made and like i said let's start with the very beginning hey let's start with the history itself so this is what we consider a log cabin block and i'll set it down nice and still so you can see it there let's start with the tradition of the log cabin it is a block that represents the home and the center of the home the center of the heart where all the warmth comes from is the fireplace and thinking of this in the traditional sense that is why we find most every log cabin block made with a red center even if the colors change now you can do whatever you want this is quilting of course and you can make your colors any way you want this is quilting of course but that is why those of you who are new to quilting see so many red square centers or red centers in the center of the log cabin block itself because it originally represented the center of the home the warmth of the heart of the family the fireplace itself where the cooking and all the gathering and everything was done around the home so super cool so that's step one is you're going to start with basically a center piece and it does or does not need to match the rest of the quilt that's kind of fun as you look through and check out i mean go on social media just type in log cabin quilts and you will see a million quilts and what's really fun is to see all those cat those quilts that are constructed with the log cabin blocks that you don't actually recognize it as a log cabin at first i saw a really cool tulip quilt today that was done just that but the blocks themselves were turned on point and that is another term for you new quilters that basically means your blocks are not running horizontal vertical but they're running kind of on point in a diamond shape doesn't change the construction it just changes the layout in the end so with that said keeping it simple keeping it basic a couple of the things that i really like to do when i'm making my log cabin blocks is i like to have my colors start from the lighter and work their way out to the edges going from light to dark and one of the things i want to point out pretty dang quickly and you can see i've got a couple of other blocks on the design wall here is some of the quick changes that will happen if you get a few of your colors out of order so let me point it out this way starting with our warm family the yellows and oranges i've gone from my lightest yellow out to kind of my medium orange and then kind of a peach out to my darker red oranges on this side so step two to the understanding of the wild cabin block is keeping your color families on one side of the aisle or the other and then also choosing fabrics that have different textures little prints work great that's why the michael miller basics are so awesome for this because we have so many different variety of textures and colors available so what i was saying is color why sorry i get so distracted thinking about all these wonderful things so keeping my color families organized and then the fabric choices growing in color value this is a really traditional really simple way to set it up and as a matter of fact one of the tricks i've done and i've got another video for all of you out there is the use of that's right one of these crazy little tools your cell phone you can take photographs of your quilt squares and then use this really cool app from instagram that's called layouts thank you jennifer carlton bailey i appreciate you teaching me this i want to make sure i give credit where credit's due with that layouts app you can turn this block into a whole quilt so let me pretend like with the snap it's on the design wall right and now you can see what this square would look like in a traditional layout where one they're all going the same direction and two not easy now they're all building their diamonds of their log cabin and you can see that difference there as well so while we're talking color organization i'll show you how to make these in just a second i've got all these pieces we're going to sew them together but let's just talk about what happens if you get one or two of your strips kind of out of order so in this case i want to point out that you can see i've gotten my darker strips kind of in different than the farthest outside edges and what that can do for you is add a new secondary element of design so if i magically put this one on the design wall there it is pretty cool right check it out you can actually see the way that that dark green then the light green the white purple then the dark purple actually form the concept of sashing within the blocks so in other words oh back to the camera here in other words it almost looks like you're using smaller squares with sashing and that's the other cool thing about these log cabin blocks is you can build a variety of sizes and put them all back into the same quilt but we were starting with the traditional and the traditional all of the squares finish at the same size and they are almost always of the same fabrics in the same location in each and every block so where you would see this wonderful hashtag print here you would find that in each and every location in each block and that's what gives you the opportunity to keep them organized all in a row or put them in diamonds like that make sense awesome okay now with that said like i i said i want to dive into the construction of these super simple so what i did is i chose a bunch of my favorite basics utilizing like i said some of these medium to larger scale prints like the marble the hash dot is wonderful in there of course for my center red i chose the fairy frost blood color because it just looks like fire to me and then when you see all of those little textures coming back together they really add a little bit of interest but no one fabric distracts from the rest because remember you're thinking in color gradients your color gradients do the work in the log cabin block the prints are only part of the color value i'm hoping that makes sense so that being said let's go ahead and start now my trick if you're not already following a pattern that you've purchased from somebody or downloaded for free on the internet let's say you're building your own pattern my strips are one and a half inch by the length of the goods when i'm getting started now i purposefully choose a half inch add-on measurement when i'm cutting my first strips like i said these are one and a halfs maybe i would also use two and a half or three and a halfs but in the traditional block all of the strips are going to be the same width including our center strip now the reason i add that half inch increment of math is it makes the calculations moving forward all the easier we're going to come back to that point i promise but let me show you what i mean so now i've already pre-cut a couple of my center squares they're squares so one side's one and a half inches you can do the rest of the math on that one now let's just go ahead and build out again um maybe like one of these yellow orange blocks right so in doing that i'm going to come on in here and i'm just going to go ahead and find my these are my working pieces i'm going to find my lightest color so you're going to make two cuts of the same size but always of different fabrics maybe what i'm trying to say is if that's a one and a half inch square your next cut to sew on will also be a one and a half inch square and so i'm going to do this and now i just realized i'm going to have to be left handed which i am not so i'm going to be very careful and i'm going to cut that and so right now we're just going to go ahead and match up those two one and a half inch squares right sides together what you're going to want to use is a quarter inch seam allowance and i always like a edge guide and what you're going to do is you're going to want to make sure that that quarter inch is fairly accurate to the quarter inch because we're going to use mathematics to calculate in the long run that's the tip that i've really learned that's really been helpful to me the other point that i found makes things really easy is ironing each step as i go along so you're probably going to have a lighter fabric towards a darker fabric so we're just going to press into the dark edge there so my first two pieces were one and a half inch square i told you i was using a half inch add-on with my cuts to facilitate making life easier i'm going to build this block using the same fabrics now on two sides so that we end up with a larger scale block like this i don't know if you picked up on it earlier i used the same fabric in two locations in each row on the smaller block i did i used a different fabric in each location well sometimes i use the same because i had chosen five fabrics per family and if you're going to do different fabrics in each row you should use even numbers because you have two per side makes sense but you can always mix and match like you can see that i've done here at any rate you can go either out we're going to build out this version this will make the most sense this is the real basic starting block and then you can get creative from here so again we've done the one and a half and one and a half so now we've got to put in this piece and so what's really going to be cool is we've pre-cut all of these strips to the one and a half inch width by the length of the goods so the one and a half and the one and a half sew together to make three however when they sewed together they lost a half of an inch because of the two quarters coming together and doing this as a seam allowance which really means the next strip is going to be two and a half by one and a half we've already made the one and a half so now all we have to do is cut a two and a half and actually that's the trick i really want to share with you in the building in the beginning is if you use the half inch increment in cutting your strips that is actually your seam allowance calculation so now every cut we make we're just going to add one inch if i had made two and a half inch wide strips every cut i would make i would add two inches so going from a two and a half to a four and a half to a six and a half but today we went from the one and a halfs and so now i got to flip my ruler upside down so i can read it correctly and make a two and a half inch cut now the reason i want to use my ruler for this is i want my strips to be accurate in the cutting process to make sure that i'm not tweaking or stretching or manipulating the block in the sewing process so before we can sew this this is the second block to the same project we're making which means that we need to also the third thing we've got to do on our log cabin blocks is we've got to make sure we make them all the same so for a moment i'm just going to take a deep breath i'm going to bring this block right over and i can see that my red fireplace is right here and my first little piece of furniture was put or my first log in my house was put right over here on my right hand side next one goes on the top once i marry this one right in here i don't have to worry about this anymore because i've already set the strategy of going around the fireplace with each add-on row oops got a little sloppy so i'm just going to take a moment flip this over so the seams in my favor at this sewing and we're going to put another quarter inch seam allowance in i'm not joking around about ironing after each step and at this point now i'm just going to start pressing out away from center so that each block kind of builds around as it goes and actually that's kind of what the back is going to look like so they're not really getting in each other's way those seams aren't okay so we've already used two cuts from our first our lightest of the yellow family so the other thing we're doing is we're working in one family two cuts and then the next family two cuts back and forth so that we can work our way around the center so now i'm going to go to the lightest fabric from the secondary family and i'm going to go ahead and cut a strip from there now i believe i told you a few moments ago you're making two of every cut so we had a one and a half by one and a half a one and a half by one and a half this is the two and a half by one and a half yes you guessed it this will also be a two and a half by one and a half and the easy thing to know is it's going to go basically right on the opposite side of the first piece so let's get that two and a half cut so i can show you how to sew it on accuracy does really help here and the next point i was starting to make is it's going to go opposite this is row 3 or round 3 so it's going opposite of 1. so you're working on opposite sides of each other as well so i'm just going to flip that over and come on in for my seam allowance again now this block is starting to grow and if you've ever seen any of my other sewing videos you know i'm a big stickler for having the weight of the fabric on the feed dogs of the machine the feed dogs pull the fabric through so the last row it was equal weights but at this point now i want my heavier fabric down low i want my new add-on piece riding on top so i've stitched it on here and again back to the ironing board i go super super simple i'm going to press it out and now i'm going to put on another piece now this piece should cut you guessed it that's right three and one half by one and a half but i'm about to show you what i don't want you to do this is the way i have sewn for a lot of years and it works in some locations but there's a disadvantage to doing it this way in this location let me show you what i mean so right now if i was doing it the old rob did i say slob oh maybe i said rob anyways it doesn't look good i take a chunk a strip and i start on one end that makes sense but watch this now if i just go ahead and sew this on due to the weight there's a tendency that i could actually be stretching the new fabric i come to the end and what i used to do is i would come to the iron again potentially adding a manipulation that shouldn't be there pressing it and then coming to my ironing board and excuse me my cutting board lining up the outside edge and then trimming it to fit it'll fit but what can happen is the block edges can start to distort and waffle and get wild you may have heard the term that will quilt out let me know what you really think if you get your blocks too tweaked they're not going to quilt out i promise because i've been trying it for years so what i want you to do is follow the mathematics and the calculations and that starts by adding the half of an inch to your strip width right so the one and a half that half inch was the math so i was cutting my strips everything was going smooth so i had a one and a half by one and a half a two and a half by one and a half we're at three and a half by one and a half so when i come back to add on the next color let me just come to my block and make sure i grab the right one out of my stack over here it's going to be the second color value and now i'm going to cut a three and a half but because you know i like efficiency and i know that cutting the math works and i knew i did a three and a half now i just did a second three and a half which means i've used up the two pieces that are the same size so i'm going to now cut a four and a half while i'm here and this is where the efficiency starts to come in and if you calculate it from the beginning you can really cut all your strips at once just making sure that you're moving from pile a color to pile b color pile a color to pile b color so that you make sure you're cutting the right sizes for the right sides of your block so as a reminder i added one inch to this second cut so that i can go ahead and as i bring this in i'm bringing it in on top of the first piece now i'll fold it over it matches up and i'm going to come on back in here and do my quarter inch seam allowance now the benefit of having that second cut done is that i'm just going to step to the iron i'll be able to press it and then as i get ready to drop in that same fabric i just want to make sure i'm staying on the yellow side if i have a yellow side and an orange side i'm staying on the yellow side not accidentally stitching this over here so this is going to go here lock it down and continue on with that process all the way through now pressing out the first of the four and a half by one and a half strips so then when i come into my secondary color pile make sure i'm grabbing the right one it was that wonderful fairy frost there okay so again now i'm going to have a four and a half i always get so nervous cutting in front of all you what if i cut the wrong size i'd have to cut another piece and then a five and a half that's that one-inch add-on trick and again i really prefer to cut both sections of fabric necessary before i move away from that piece of fabric it just helps me keep it all so much more organized in my mind there flip it on over and keep on moving foreign so and by following these simple techniques the patchwork really couldn't be much easier and if you practice it this way you'll actually improve your accuracy in both your cutting and your sewing and your pressing and just keep building out as your squares go all the way around now just in case you're interested i did i used five different colors on each side so my very last strip and you'll have one last strip that you don't cut a second one for on this particular block i worked my way all the way up to a one and a half by eleven and a half inch strip so this block should technically finish out about eleven and a half inches but again you can keep calculating or adding you can add in all of your different colors any way you want for all kinds of different organization and different colors and different layouts and have all kinds of fun so before i leave you all here today i want to just give you a couple of more moments of creativity utilizing that awesome app from the instagram layouts and i've taken of these blocks that i've been creating threw them on the design wall again just took a photograph and played with them through instagram so i think i'll just roll a little bit of music for all of you and show you a few more of those layouts and a couple of different ones point out that you can have all your colors like i said running in one direction forming diamonds doing all kinds of different stuff zigzags and crazy different manipulations they're super super fun so i want to say thank you all for being here today i appreciate you following along make sure you're subscribed to the videos we have a blast here at making it fun every week i will be back next week we're going to tackle the modern wonky version of the log cabin and just have a blast with it i'll teach you a little bit about free sewing and free piecing and just a little bit of way to free up if you don't want to be so accurate and the cool thing is with the blocks all finish out about the same size we can put them together in the same quilt so you never know what we're going to end up with at a project right here at making it fun like i said let's roll that music and show you some more designs over on the design wall thanks again folks we'll see you with the wonky one next week [Music] you

Channel: Making It Fun with Rob Appell

Views: 63,149

Rating: 4.9468637 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Miller Fabrics, Rob Appell, Log Cabin Quilts, Log Cabin quilt block, easy quilt, bright quilt, basic quilt block, history of quilt

Id: 8gGJLJdWYWg

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021