Janet Rae, in Edinburgh, raises another possibility for the source of the design: land cultivation as commonly practiced from the Middle ages onward in Europe and the British Isles. She discusses the Mummy theory in some detail, from both the British and French viewpoints. It contains pictures and drawings of mummies and the Log Cabin design. In Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, #293, Darcy Pattison cites 'Description de l'Egypte' which is a document published by French scholars who went to Egypt with Napoleon in the early part of the 19th Century. The French were also caught up in the Egyptian craze. Can't you just see a farmers wife finding the pattern sitting in her yard and copying it with strips of fabric? There were vast numbers of these mummies, and not knowing what to do with them, many were shipped back to England and distributed to farmers for fertilizer. Some of the mummies are even colored, with some sort of dye, in light and dark areas on the diagonals, exactly like our contemporary Log Cabin blocks. Some of these are housed in the British Museum today and you can easily see the Log Cabin patterning in the way the strips of linen are wound around the cat or ibex. In the early part of the 19th Century, when the tombs in Egypt were opened, the British found thousands of small animal mummies, put there as funerary objects of respect for the departed royalty. The 'Mummy theory' is one of the most plausible. Unfortunately, none of these theories can be verified at this point, but wouldn't it be fun to try? There are several theories, and bear in mind we quilters can find patterns anywhere we look….bathroom floors, plowed fields seen from an airplane, the back of a jacket worn by someone in a line in front of us.

When you begin to explore the origins of the pattern, and its translation into fabric, it gets more and more interesting, and can turn into a treasure hunt. A beautiful small box made for sewing tools, embroidered on four sides with classic Log Cabins and a row of Courthouse Steps Log Cabins can be found in the National Museum of Scotland. In Great Britain, a square perfume bag (sachet) worked in lattice silks in the pattern is shown in a 1926 book. Log Cabin patterning on the other hand, has been found in very early inlaid wood designs, in weavings, and in embroideries. The British Quilt Heritage Project found extant Log Cabin quilts made as early as the Our earliest signed/dated Log Cabin quilt was made in 1869, according to Barbara Brackman's database begun with the Kansas quilt project in the 1980's. Log Cabin quilt designs, however, have been found across the Atlantic quite a bit earlier than we have documented them in the US. It too derives its design from the placement of dark and light values The graphic Pineapple Log Cabin design, is a classic log cabin with strips laid on the diagonals in addition to those on the horizontal and vertical planes.

The heydey of the Log Cabin in this country was in the third and fourth quarters of the 19th Century, corresponding to the widespread trek Westward after the Civil War, so the 'little-house-on-the-Prairie' figure fits nicely. Quilters are told that it represents log cabins on the prairie with red center squares for the hearth, light values on one side for the sunny side of the house and dark values on the opposite side for the shady side of the house. We Americans have long considered this pattern the quintessential American design. These foundations were often waste fabrics of different weights, perhaps recycled, and in the days before sewing machines were widely available, would be almost impossible to quilt through by hand. Once I began to collect old quilts, I understood why. When I began quilting, I was told with great authority that Log Cabin quilts were always tied, never quilted.

Since the blocks were made of narrow strips of fabric, sewing them together on a foundation provided the necessary precision as well as stability. The older Log Cabin quilts are often scrappy rather than color coordinated. Simple to construct and easily made with either scraps or planned yardage, the pattern appeals to beginning and advanced quilters alike.Įarly blocks were almost always pieced on fabric foundations. The blocks can be set together in too many ways to list, although there are a number of named designs such as Barn Raising, Sunshine and Shadow, and Straight Furrow. Beginning with a center shape, usually a square, the traditional design is made by sewing strips in sequence around the sides of the square, varying the values between light and dark. Log Cabin quilt designs are among the most popular and easily recognized of all quilt patterns.

Modern log cabin quilt pattern