Building a Cabin

I was reading a book for our book club last month that revolved around a community of women during the Civil War.  The women in this community were making quilts to send to the soldiers.  The beginning of each chapter had a description of a quilt.  I’ve always been fascinated by quilts, even though I don’t really sew.  As a kid I would pore over my grandma’s quilt books when I visited her.  She bought me graph paper and colored pencils for me to draw out my favorite patterns.  I spent hours coloring in quilts on that graph paper!

As I read the chapter on log cabin quilts, I started to think about all the sock yarn scraps and mini skeins that I have.

• What would it look like if I started a log cabin blanket using sock yarn scraps?  I know that worsted weight would be faster, but I don’t have lots of odds and ends of superwash worsted laying around.
• What would it look like?
• Would I stick to a monochrome color pallate?  Probably not feasible with the wide variety of sock yarns I have.
• Superwash?  Definitely.
• How would I attach each rectangle and would I want to weave in all those ends?
• How long would this epic sounding project take me?!
• I love looking at all the ways you can put together a log cabin quilt.

I took out all my superwash sock yarn mini skeins and leftovers and sorted them into darks, lights and reds.  Red is a traditional color for the center of the square – it represents the hearth as the center of the home.  There is some neat history about the log cabin quilt here.

Still in the somewhat thinking about it stage, I drug out all my sock yarn mini skeins.  The reds went into one baggie to use for the centers.  The darks and lights went into gallon size bags.  I have one large ziplock bag of each.

This might be the crazy talking, but I’m going to do it.  (Did you really have any doubt?)

I will be making half the square with dark colors and half the square with light colors.  When the quilt is finished, I’ll match up the lights next to the lights and the dark side next to the darks.  This can either be arranged into diagonal stripes or crosses.