FOR THE LOVE OF LOG CABINS!!!

Hi, I'm Donna Jordan from Jordan Fabrics. One of the special kits that Matt Cutts makes is the log cabin. We

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log cabin blocks and theirs are completely cut to size so each piece is cut widthwise and lengthwise, but we get questions from customers who want to cut their own log cabin blocks, you can cut blocks of almost anything from two and a half inch strips, today I'm going to show you how to cut them from fat quarter packages. The log cabin pattern looks good in almost any color combination. but you need to have some very dark fabrics and some very light fabrics for that pattern to really show through.

I'm going to make a pretty big quilt, so I'm going to use 18 of these dark, thick quarters called driftwood. all the boutiques and then for my lights I'll use these twelve and patina and they're called neutrals. This is all we need to make all the patchwork blocks, so grab your fat quarters, let's go down to the studio and start the first one. The step is to open all the fat quarters and let everything be well ironed and flat. I have 18 of the dark fat quarters for the log cabin pattern. The darker side requires a little more yardage.

It is larger than the lighter side. The lighter side is. almost like a background and that's why we only have twelve of these light ones and eighteen dark ones. It is always important to iron the fabric very flat before cutting it that way your cuts will be nice and precise. Everything is ironed and stacked. I've got the dark ones here, the lights here and that's what we're going to start with, the lights, each light fat quarter is cut exactly the same and for this pattern we need to get 21 inches up here so we can get it with the batise that I'm just going to cut off the bottom a little bit here.

I have them lined up nice and even and now I can go up 21 inches if you use fabric that has a wide selvedge and print there you might not be able to. get 21 inches on each piece and I'll show you what to do next in case you can't, even though they are all cut the same size. I can't cut 12 layers very easily, so I'll take half of them. I'm going to cut half and then we'll do the same with the other half. I like to hold my ruler with a weight because it keeps it from moving around, so the first step is to cut this into two inch strips.

We are going now. to turn our board on its side and we're going to subcut these strips, so I have written down here everything that we're going to do for the subcuts, but you don't have to worry about having this right now because we have this. in the free pattern right in the description below, right below the video, here's a link that says free pattern, so we have eight different two inch strips and we'll take half of them, make some nines and ten and a half and then I'll go to take the other half. I'm going to do three, four and a half, six and seven and a half.

I'm just going to move one of these down to have some separation between those four strips and these four strips. Of these four I am going to make the ten and a half and the nines in a cut of this size. I can hold the entire ruler with my hand. I'm right on top of the fabric, so I don't always have to wait for a short. short like this, so there are the nines and the ten and a half. I'm just going to stack them and put them out of the way now these pieces here we're going to have to be careful because we need to go up 21 inches so if I do For my first cut there, I'll have enough room to put all the pieces that I need so the first pieces I need They are three inches, then I need four and a half and I like to measure each time so I know what I'm cutting. this line right here and I like to put the ruler on what I haven't cut yet so it doesn't move.

The next cut is six inches and my ruler is six inches, so I'm going to put it right on that line. there, the last cut is seven and a half inches, so I can do it here now, that's the first half of all the fabrics. Now I'm going to do exactly the same thing with this half. All my lightweight fabrics are cut now when you cut yours make sure you cut the biggest pieces first so cut the sevens and work your way down so in case your fabric isn't suitable enough it's these little ones a who you still can't so I'm using boutiques where I can always get 21 inches.

In boutiques, if you use printed fabrics occasionally, they have a wide selvedge and you have to be a little careful, so if you look at this fabric here, I can get 21 inches, but you just have to be a little cautious. So that you don't end up with the selvedge visible there, if the fabric is not very wide and you can't get all the pieces, you can get an extra fat quarter or just a little bit of fabric and cut the extra cut into 3. inch pieces. our 18 darkest fat quarters, we need to pick two of them to use for the center squares and I'm going to use this almost solid fat and then I'm going to find another really dark one, I think.

I'll use this one, so these two we'll cut into three inch center squares. I'm going to cut four layers at a time, so I'm just going to fold this over here and I'm going to go ahead and do my three inches. cuts, we now have 48 central squares. Now take some of your 60 dark fat quarters. I think I cut eight layers. I can cut eight layers easily, but cut what you're comfortable with and stack them carefully and then we'll make two inches. Cut like we did last time, so we'll get eight of these two-inch cuts. Now we're going to rotate the board and make some subcuts, so I've got it all written down.

What you need. We'll make about ten and a half and nines, well, we'll get all these different ones from the strips and it'll be a lot easier if you just print out the free pattern and you'll have that as a guide. All the cut. Ready, let's stack these. We have all the other pieces here, so we'll get a full stack and go over to the sewing machine. I have everything stacked here and I need one of each size of all. these pieces, but I'm not going to take the same piece from each pile because my block would end up with all of these on the light side and all of these on the dark side, so I'll take one from each pile, but I'll take a different print from each pile now we have all the pieces we need, and some additional pieces we need here for a block, so I'm going to set them aside and put them in Sort, so I'll start with the center square.

I'm going to add two lights, then two darks, then there will be two light ones, then two dark ones, two light ones and two dark ones. Now, although they are all cut exactly to size, they won't. It doesn't fit exactly right now because all the seam allowances are here, so I'm going to start right here, add this piece, and then work the right way around in a circular fashion, so I'm just going to slide them a little bit to keep them in place. your pairs so I have enough room to sew here so take the first two pieces here with right sides together with a quarter inch seam and they fit exactly we cut them exactly to the size they need so sew the first one piece and give it a quarter. open that up press a little with your finger the next piece will go here now if you're not sure where the piece will go put it back there but this piece will go here too if you put it the instructions I wrote next to you on the machine you can always checking them too so that this piece again fits exactly, it makes it very easy to sew the blocks together, finger press each seam as you go, just a little bit, that does it.

It's very easy for pieces to lay flat and the next piece to fit, so with each piece you sew, you'll turn it a quarter turn to open it and then the next piece will continue in that position. There this piece fits exactly here and keep adding your pieces as you go until the block is ready. Here is the last piece and I always like to complete a block, but when I make the whole quilt I don't do it in blocks. at the same time I like to sew them on both, so I'll show you another way to make a bunch.

It's good to make one block because then you know how beautiful it looks, so make lots of blocks. take all your stacks and place them here, so I'm going to keep that block up there so we can see it, but I really just need the center squares and this piece, and I'm going to place these, this one here and this one. Here I'm going to knit a piece of chain, so I'm going to gather these right sides together, sew them together and leave them on the machine with just a couple of stitches between each one so we can do this for the entire pile, this eliminates a lot of extra work. thread and it goes very fast so do this for the whole stack each piece here is the last of these three inch pieces and now we can cut them out in bulk so I usually put it on my lap because I can stack them easier and so I can just pull this down make a stack and they're going to stay nice and neat now that we've got them all cut out we're going to give the whole stack a quarter turn and we're going to take the next piece and you're going to sew all of this up here now you want to make sure you don't sew the same fabric, so what you can do is take a couple of these from the top, put them on the bottom and then we'll know.

I'm sure we won't get the same fabric next to it, they are so open, one piece up, press it a little with your finger, this piece will fit exactly and do the same procedure, sew all the way, same procedure here, cut the threads and Now you can see why I keep about half an inch between these blocks because then when I cut them, there are still some seams right between them and these seams are not going to separate when we open them, we don't want it to separate. I want some thread, give them another quarter turn and take your first stack of dark prints and now this one is going to go right here, so a couple of cautions you want to always make sure you check your instructions or your finished block. to make sure that you're putting the piece where it needs to go because this piece is going to go here but it's going to fit here or here or here it's going to fit anywhere and you don't want to sew a whole stack of these. on the wrong side, so always check your pattern and make sure you have it oriented correctly, so keep adding your pieces until you have all the blocks ready, the blocks are finished, they are all ironed, nice and flat, and now we have to make the most fun part we have to place the blocks so the nice thing about the log cabin blocks is that they are half light and half dark so when you turn them in different directions you get another pattern which shows that you get a secondary pattern so here One thing we can do is make diamonds like this and we can repeat this so we do the same thing again and we can get big diamonds all over the quilt so this is just one of the possibilities so we have these big diamonds, but when you look at it overall, the pattern just interlocks and interlocks and looks really cool.

The next design I'm going to show you is called a straight ridge, so here we're just going to have dark lines across the quilt, so we're going to put all the dark ones in a row, then we're going to put all the light ones in a row and it could be more easy to just pick up all the pieces and start from scratch, but we'll see, we'll start spinning. now we have a couple, now we have long rows of light and long rows of dark and again those different boutique colors to match so well that it looks very interesting.

One of my favorite designs is the barn elevation design where you start. the middle of the quilt right here with dark in the middle and it has a dark diamond but then it has bigger and bigger diamonds as we go so I'm going to start turning the rest of the pieces and show you what I seem to like a lot too this design because you see your eye go to the center of the quilt and then you have those rings of color getting bigger and bigger and I really like that focal point right in the middle of the quilt it's also possible to make a star in the middle of the quilt quilt, so I'm going to play with the blocks and see if I can fix that design.

Now with this pattern you can see the star in the middle as you go further and further. back, so we have a big star there and it's surrounded by more outside lines here and remember that when you sell your blocks together you'll be able to see the secondary pattern a little bit easier when we have all the raw edges. You don't see it as much, but this is also a very pretty pattern. There is another design I would like to try. We've done this before and it has dark diamonds and then the next row is offset and I'm going to try that. that here, but I'm going to make the diamonds light instead of dark.

This design is fun. We have big light diamonds and then we have another row of them but they are offset a little bit so the dark fabrics make up half of this there is a very pretty design all I have done for this design is just reverse everything from the last one I just showed you, so now I have dark diamonds and the middle row is offset a little bit and I really like this design, so this is the design I'm going to use to sew the blocks. The last row is sewn. Now let's choose some fabric for the border.

It's good to finish the quilt top before choosing the borders I usually have. an idea of ​​what I want to use, but I like to compare them to Patrik and see how they look in lifereal. This coat has so many colors that it will be very easy to make out the edges if you wanted to show more. gray or more brown it would be very easy to find some fabrics that match very well the border of my patrick has a lot of light much lighter on the outside, so first I want to make a small dark border.

We have some almost solid black boutiques, boutiques that have just a little bit of print, let's see this is on the quilt, but that's going to be something really pretty because it's nice and strong, but it has a little bit of print, let's use that first, then I want to put a light border on it and then finish with a darker border again. I have a whole section of light prints that are in Here any of these would work great look this has some smaller dots that will look great and then let's finish with a more brown fabric so let's try to look at this section here oh this one, this one would be really good, it has a lot of brown in it. but it also has some black.

I think we'll do the first, second, third and then put this on the quilting machine. I can't wait to see how it turns out. I have many thread color possibilities for this quilt of yours. There are so many different shades in it, any of these neutrals will look great. I normally prefer a lighter thread color, but I think this ashy brown won't show up all in the dark areas that will be seen here. a little bit of light but not too much and I really think it will look better. I will be quilting the quilt in a pattern called still waters.

I use it a lot for boutiques, it's just soft doodles and it looks like flowing water. This is a quilting pattern designed by Anne Bright and I am going to make it quite large. I don't want too much quilting taken away from the patchwork pattern. Come in and take a look. The quilt turned out so big. I am very happy with it. I think this will fit my king size bed at home. I

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how the calm water quilting pattern forms a sort of path with the light boutiques. It really makes it seem like there's a lot of movement.

There are many different fabrics here that can be combined with many different rooms. The log cabin is of course very easy to sew. Here you can see the block to the big block, it measures about 11 and a half inches and with this secondary pattern it shows that it is really Very fun on the back. I used a light batik and again you can see that vision of the water rippling there and we have the little bubbles, so the quilting really improved on the front and the back. Thanks for watching our tutorial today on how. to make a log cabin quilt with fat quarters now we are going to have another giveaway we are going to give away this star quilt made with faceted fabrics Kay let's see if we can get down here everything is going well we did a tutorial on how to make this quilt and it's so much fun it has this kite tail so this is the giveaway it's very easy to enter it's open to everyone around the world so just click the link below that says giveaway enter your email address email and your name and you can win now if you don't want to miss any of our tutorials when we make new quilts be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, happy quilting.