Dear Step-Son recently passed the bar and the quilt I made him five years ago is looking worn, so I want to make him another (SHH! It'll be a surprise.) I'm considering courthouse steps, but as I look at pictures of them, they're clearly not as versatile--or interesting, from what I've seen--as log cabins. Am I right? Any others come to mind that would be appropriate for a *good* lawyer (Robbing Peter to Pay Paul--no!)? I do simple patchwork and I want it to be scrappy; I have a lot of medium blues with medium-large prints which I'd like to chop up into something...
A week or so ago, I played with a string-pieced log cabin. Big fun. Looks much more complicated than it truly is - and is a just super way to have a scrappy look. Generally, it's just making a dark string and a light string, and then you proceed with whatever measurements you like for doing log cabin. I'll hunt my magazine for you if you're interested. Polly
I always think that Courthouse steps is far more useful than Log Cabin itself, because it is symmetrical. What you can do is play with the colours. You can use two (and make lanterns - chinese), you can use three or you can use four and use the arrangement of the blocks according to the colours as your way of making the variety. If I were you I would play with some quarter-square triangles (which is, in effect what courthouse blocks are), using the different colourways and see what you get! You could do this by taking a piece of graph paper and drawing a diagonal grid in it to make the quarter-squares and then play with colouring them. I wish I had a bit of time to have a play too - we could see what we came up with. But, I think it is worth at least an hour to see whether you find something you like. Good luck. Don't forget the use of different width 'logs' will give you apparent curves in the same way as log cabin itself. Have fun! . In message , dogmom writes
I don't do a lot of log cabins, though I have had fun using log cabin technology on other patterns. Example: take a broken star and instead of making the big diamonds out of little diamonds make them like you would a log cabin block, and so on.
I would take a swing at one of these
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Job's Troubles and Crossed Canoes are quite simple and look handsome with just few colors. As you can see they have Crossed Canoes done up as a counterpoint in the illustration, If you used your variety of blues and either a solid, a small scattered print, or single value print for the other fabric you can do a sort of scrappy counterpoint.
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I love blocks like this. you get such a nifty overall pattern from them. Only I would do it with just HSTs as a 16 or 13 (would leave the center whole) patch instead of fussing about like they do in the instructions.
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Another easy fast moving block. Though I tend to do it by making the four patches and then putting it together in three subunits instead of four. Easy as it is, it does look fine when it is all together.
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This is one of my fallbacks for a fast baby quilt, and it does look well as a larger quilt too. I think it looks especially grand if you do it in scrappy color families, so really it is the first one I thought of when you said you wanted scappy with a lot of blue. For example take your blues and use them for the brown marble in the picture, then use scrappy reds for the bows, and scrappy yellows for the bars, whatever you have that works happily together. By the by, I make QSTs and cut them in half and then to size for the sides of the arkansas traveler type squares instead of making a million little squares like the site does, but whatever works easiest for you.
This should be enough to get your brain hopping...
So sweet of you to offer, Polly, but I think I know what you mean. Is that the same thing as doing a half light/half dark (on the diagonal) block in strings? (Wish I could get this 'puter to draw--it'd be much easier to describe!) This summer I finished a string-y quilt in blocks like that, all in light/dark scraps. Can't tell that it dented my stash at all but it looks great.
Later, I've realized that you said you had a collection of medium blues. I don't think the strippy log cabin would work so well with those . . . unless, of course, you would make a major sacrifice and force yourself to do some shopping. =) Polly
Yes, you're right, and those medium blues can give me the blues! I tried making the string LC's with mediums and they were actually SO ugly I couldn't use them (except four, that I turned into a pillow.) Mediums are--challenging, on good days.
Can you take them to the LQS and let them visit with some yellows? There's just not much that's prettier than a blue and yellow quilt. Except, of course, it would need to be the 'just right' yellows. Sometimes a blue and yellow combination can be just plain dreary. The same goes for putting purple and yellow together - they may sparkle or they may just sit there and sulk. Er, ummmm. . . . what were we talking about? I think holiday cooking has about exhausted me. Polly
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