Beach House Log Cabin Quilt

I have always wanted to do a beige and blue quilt. Or “Bleige” as Kearney over at A Detailed House likes to call it. Long before I had a pattern in my mind I thought these colours would be soft, beautiful and reminiscent of the beach. The beige resembles sand, the blue the water and the hint of white almost seems like the white wash of the waves…

So when I finished my first quilt, and my sister stopped nagging me to make her one I excitedly went to buy my fabrics for this quilt.

I could not stop. There were so many fantastic tones in neutral beige which contrasted the crisp blues that I treated myself to quite a nice little fabric stash. Lucky me.

Neutral Beige

Beachy Blue

I took them home. I stared at them. I ironed them. Even now I still feel soothed just looking over the fabrics. I really love them.

Anyway, onto the pattern. I was inspired to tackle a log-cabin quilt since watching it being made on a pay-tv craft channel (it was a while a go and I cannot recall the name). I immediately was intriguied. The block itself is so intricate and pretty and then there is all the amazing patterns you can create with it.

Plus you can add a lot of interesting tonality as you build up the layers of the block.

Log Cabin Block

It was decided. I would make a log cabin quilt using my beach tones.

I would make a beach inspired log cabin quilt

And thus the Beach House Log Cabin quilt was born. I thought it was an interesting twist on the original name of the quilt.

Beachy Log Cabin Block

I played around with the layout of the quilt for days. Did I want to do zig zags or a diamond or a heart or a… well the options were overwhelming.

In the end I thought a simple stripe pattern would be most beautiful for the colors I had chosen as the stripes almost resemble the water and sand of the beach.

Beach House Quilt Sketches

I was so excited to sit down and start creating this quilt over the Easter break. I have been thinking about it for a long time and was eager to start cutting and sewing, especially as I just invested in a rotary cutter (Oh my Lord, how was I living without that tool!!!!)

The log cabin quilt is quite enjoyable to make and you work on building up the block round and round with the length of the pieces getting larger and larger. I found the best way to do this was by making templated of each size of fabric which you can use to outline onto the fabric before cutting.

For each block (I have to build 90 overall) I:

• play around with my color combination
  

  Choosing the colours

• settle on the colors
• press the fabric
• cut all the shapes (using my brilliant new rotary cutter)
  

  Shapes all cut

  

• sew the block together starting with the smallest piece (the top rectangle) and ending with the largest piece
  

  Sewing the block

  

• press the seams
  

  Finished Block

  

I cannot wait until the weekend to get back to my quilt…

I made The Hubby choose his favorite fabric combination. He did eventually get tired of me asking...

 

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