Odd Log Cabin: A Free Quilt Pattern for JellyRolls

Vintage Log Cabin quilt in the Courthouse Steps variation

with darks and lights opposite each other.

From the prints I'd guess this quilt was pieced about 1880-1900.

Same time, similar pattern, different look.

The center square in each block is white, which makes the background shift into the foreground and vice versa. The blocks are not square.

I love this little antique top of rectangular blocks I found somewhere on the internet. Inspired by the way the blocks float I designed a similar pattern in  EQ7. First I'll show you the blocks in conventional manner as squares.

The block here is based on a grid of 7 x 7.

If you use 2-1/2" pre-cut JellyRoll strips

the finished block would be 14".

Combine a JellyRoll of my Old Cambridge Pike

with a JellyRoll of Moda Bella Solids in a white....

Cutting a 14" Block

A - Cut 2 white strips 14-1/2 " x 2-1/2".

B - Cut 2 print strips and 2 white strips 10-1/2" x 2-1/2".

C - Cut 2 print strips and 2 white strips 6-1/2" x 2-1/2".

D - Cut 2 print squares and 1 white square 2-1/2 " x 2-1/2".

How to Piece 

Start in the middle with a strip of 3 and add strips to either side. Work

your way out.

Set 16 square blocks in a 4x4 grid and the finished top will

be 36" square.

But this is not what the antique looks like.

 I realized it looks different because it's a rectangular block.

If you made your blocks 10" x 14" you'd get the same effect.

6 blocks across, 6 down---but the blocks

are rectangles so you wind up with a top

that is 60" x 84".

The only difference between piecing the rectangular

block and the square block is you leave off piece A.

Easy enough to do.

Mi Casa by Carrie Nelson (Miss Rosie's Quilts)

And here's a fabric idea I pirated from

Carrie's Moda blog. She used a variety of Moda Layer Cakes

new and old in her Sun and Shadow log cabin block. It's a great period

look with some contemporary drama.

The pattern is in a new book I Love Log Cabins.

See her post about it here:

http://blog.modafabrics.com/2016/02/cabin-fever/

She says:

"Mi Casa finishes at 77" x 77" and it uses a diagonal setting to make a "sun and shadow" or checkerboard of lights and darks. The strips finish at 3/4" wide so there are a few tips included about cutting and sewing log cabin strips, especially those that are a bit narrower."

Quilts For Sale: Models and Samples

Voysey Improv by Linda Frost, 2015

36 x 42

We are selling some of the models for my books and fabric lines
in my Etsy shop.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop

Dottie for Scale

(No not for sale---for SCALE)

Linda made this one from my Morris Modernized: CFA Vosey fabric for Moda.

We've got a few others up there such as this

double fan or snake trail, hand pieced and hand quilted by me from

1930s repro prints. It was pictured in Making History.

Georgann Eglinski and I did this one with a trapunto fish in the center. It's 33" x 33".

There's a section called Georgann's Jumble Sale where we

donate the proceeds to a charity.

Moonstruck

And a little Round Robin

with a house theme that the Sewhatevers did around

my improv house in the moonlight.

Check the store every once in a while to see what we've posted.

Antique Quilt Exhibits: Winter, Spring 2016

Grab your valise and a trolley to see some antique quilt shows this winter and into spring.

Detail of Wheels Quilt

Collection of the Quilt Museum

California, San Jose
San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Blanket Statements: New Quilts from Kaffe Fassett and Historical Quilts from the Collection of the Quilt Museum and Gallery, York, England. Fifteen historical quilts from 1780 and 1949 and twenty from Kaffe Fassett's studio. Through June 28, 2016

http://www.sjquiltmuseum.org/

Poppy Quilt by Marie Webster

Collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Indiana, Indianapolis
Indianapolis Museum of Art. A Joy Forever: Marie Webster Quilts.Through January 8, 2017.

Seth Thomas Rose

Indiana, Shipshewana
Quilt Festival, June 22-25: El's Antique Quilt Show - Pieced and Appliquéd Quilts from the 1920's and 1930's from Eleanor Burns's collection.

http://www.shipshewanaquiltfest.com/special_exhibits.html

Iowa, LaPorte
FFA & Ag Museum on Main Street. A small show of antique quilts from a local collection. Through November.
http://4andfifteen.blogspot.com/2016/04/ffa-ag-historical-museum-quilt-display.html

Iowa, Winterset
The new Iowa Quilt Museum's opening exhibit Three Centuries of Red + White Quilts, will be up through October, 2016.

Fundraising Quilt dated 1899, Newton, Kansas

Kansas, Newton
Harvey County Historical Society. Purposeful Stitches: Community Quilts. Fundraising and signature/memorial quilts.
Through December 2, 2017.
http://hchm.org/exhibits/

Maine, Augusta
Augusta Civic Center, Maine Quilts. July 29-31, 2016
Little Quilts from Antique Inspirations Exhibit, Sponsored by Busy Thimble, Litchfield, Cyndi Black and Wendy Caton Reed.
Quilt as Desired. Mary Kerr.

Massachusetts, Lowell
New England Quilt Museum. First Impressions 2016: New to the Collection. Classroom Gallery. February 24 - May 15, 2016

http://nequiltmuseum.org

Bird of Paradise top from

the American Folk Art Museum

Missouri, St. Louis.

St. Louis Art Museum. Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum. Includes several antique quilts.

June 19 - September 11, 2016

http://www.slam.org/exhibitions/genius.php

Nebraska, Lincoln
International Quilt Study Center & Museum/Quilt House.

Favorites from the Byron and Sara Rhodes Dillow Collection showcases beautiful and rare chintz, toile, and calico in quilts and textiles that express the Dillows’ passion for fabric. Through August 23, 2016.
Inside the Wrapper: The True Tales of the Mountain Mist Quilt Patterns, curated by Linda Pumphrey.
July 1 - October 23, 2016http://www.quiltstudy.org/exhibitions/

New York, Canton
TAUNY (Traditional Arts in Upstate New York)

Two shows:
Material Remains: One Woman's Life Through the Eye of Her Needle, the domestic needlework of Louise Barrows Lowe, a Colorado woman whose life straddled the 19th and 20th centuries. Curated by historian Hallie Bond.
Warmth, Remembrance, and Art: 200 Years of Quilts and Comforters in New York's North Country opens April 2, 2016. Sixty quilts documented by the Northern New York Quilt Project. Through October.

http://tauny.org/pages/194/22/quilt-exhibit-wra

Applique quilt, Ernestine Eberhardt Zaumseil, c

a. 1865. Chandlerville, Illinois. 

Gift of George E. Schoellkopf, 2013 (Detail)

Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York, Manhattan

Metropolitan Museum of Art. American Quilts and Folk Art includes recent quilt acquisitions in two rotations: The second rotation is up through August 7, 2016.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2015/american-quilts-and-folk-art

Texas, LaGrange

Texas Quilt Museum. Antique Ohio Amish Quilts from the Darwin B. Bearley Collection. Through June 26, 2016.

http://www.texasquiltmuseum.org/

Vermont, Essex Junction
Vermont Quilt Festival. June 24-26, 2016.Two antique exhibits this year:
Lobby Lights: Red and White Quilts.

Plain and Fancy. Curators Donna Bister and Richard L. Cleveland are showing quilts from their 1991 book.
http://www.vqf.org/

Quilt from the Christ Collection

Virginia, Harrisonburg

American Pride: Eagles and Star Quilts from the Pat and Arlan Christ Collection

May 17-September 10, 2016

http://www.vaquiltmuseum.org

Virginia, Lynchburg
Lynchburg Museum. A Feast for the Eyes: Quilts and Textiles from Central Virginia. Through December 31, 2016,
http://www.lynchburgmuseum.org/features/

Virginia, Williamsburg
Colonial Williamsburg, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.  A Century of African-American Quilts features twelve quilts from the collection dating from 1875. Through January, 2018.
https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/do/art-museums/rockefeller-museum/century-of-quilts/

Lidian from Old Cambridge Pike

Each of the prints in my latest Moda reproduction fabric collection

recalls a person or place along the Old Cambridge Pike

that ran through literary New England.

The largest floral is named Lidian.

The document print above, a gift from collector Arnold Savage.

Woman posing with a similar furnishing print, about 1890.

A perfect piece of cretonne from the 1870-1900 era.

We toned down the colors.

The repro print comes in 8 colorways across the whole range---

blue to red and pink.

And it has a butterfly for you fans of fussy-cut

chintz.

It's named for Lidian Emerson (1802-1892)

This photo with son Edward Waldo was taken in the late 1840s.

Lydia Jackson married widower Ralph Waldo Emerson when she was 32 in 1835. They moved to a large house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord (It's now called Lexington Road). Emerson, a former minister, became a philosopher and surprisingly a philosopher who made a good living writing and lecturing about his ideas. 

Emerson called his wife Lidian and this became her name, although he had several other nicknames for her.

"Queenie (who has a gift to curse and swear) will every now and then despite of all manners & christianity rip out on Saints, reformers, & Divine Providence with the most edifying zeal."
Ralph Waldo Emerson diary, 1841.

The house was large and visitors like Henry Thoreau and Margaret Fuller stayed for months on end.

The Emerson House on the old Cambridge Pike was the center of literary New England, home to transcendentalist philosophers, novelists, poets and dreamers.

You can walk from the Emersons to the Hawthornes to the Alcotts--- something every one interested in American literature should do.

We used the Lidian print in brown for the strips in the "Wild Oats"

(pattern picture from Miss Rosie's Quilt Company).

Here's my reading list for this month:

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall. If I were Lidian I would have spoken sharply to Margaret who lived in the attic entirely too long. I imagine Queenie did have a few words to say.

The Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson, edited by Delores Bird Carpenter.

The People of Concord: One Year in the Flowering of New England by Paul Brooks.

And if you like historical fiction there's a hot novel:

Mr Emerson's Wife by Amy Belding.

Melissa Corry stitched the model quilt for "Wild Oats."

She used the blue colorway.

See her post here:

http://www.happyquiltingmelissa.com/2015/11/wild-oats-quilt.html

I'm going to show some antique quilts with cretonne borders

over on my Facebook page this week.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011019971781