The Three-Rule Log Cabin

Yesterday we woke to dark skies and wind. Around 8 a.m. the rain began, light at first. It rained all day, sometimes light, sometimes quite heavy. When we went to bed last night it was still raining. When I got up around 12:15 a.m. it was still raining. But we didn't hear the rain this morning: it had changed to snow, as we expected.

The snow continued until noon today, along with heavy winds. At times the wind was almost strong enough to push me over. So M. and I did not walk this morning.

Yesterday my quilting scrap basket was overflowing so I did some trimming and cutting. I take the remnants and trim them to whatever size is possible. The containers for 1 1/2" and 2" strips and squares were almost too full to accept any more scraps, so I thought I should do something to use up these pieces.

This morning I started sewing log cabin squares with just three rules: 1. Start with a red square in the center. 2. Use a 1 1/2" strip twice, then a 2" strip twice, continuing in that sequence. (That skews the square slightly, and put the red center slightly off center.) 3. Don't use the same material twice in one square.

Here are the two scrap containers, and a square in process on the sewing machine.

Usually log cabin squares have one side light strips and one side dark strips. I ignored that rule, but I did decide as I went along that there would be no black, white, or very bright colours (other than the red center) included.

I soon found out that without the division of lights and darks, the blocks appear very ungainly. The upper left block was the first one, and is somewhat divided into lights and darks. The others are more random, except

that the lights tend to be concentrated in the center of the square. Live and Learn, I guess. There's a reason why log cabin blocks are the way they are. So now I have to decide what to do with these really stupid looking log cabin blocks. Maybe use them as orphan blocks on the back of some future quilt?

Calgary and points west suffered a much great snowfall, and much more inconvenience. We figure we got about 2" of rain out of this storm, and we are really grateful!