One log cabin block, 62 inches square.
That's the whole of Dusk 'til Dawn. It's a free log cabin quilt pattern by Valori Wells for Robert Kaufman, made from two roll-ups of 2 1/2 inch strips in twelve Kona Cotton solids, every one of them a blue. If you want a first big quilt with nothing to match, this is a good one: there are no blocks to join and no sashing to line up. You start with a pieced center a few inches across and keep adding rounds of strips until the quilt is done. The cover rates it for the enthusiastic novice: someone who's a total beginner and wants to learn more.
The name tells you how to read it. The center is the palest blue in the quilt, the outer rounds are navy and indigo, and the twelve blues in between make the light come up slowly, round by round.
Free Log Cabin Quilt Pattern PDF Download
Six pages, free, designed by Valori Wells, whose site is valoriwells.com, and published by Robert Kaufman Fabrics in 2016. It features Kona Cotton Solids.
Pattern: Dusk 'til Dawn
Brand: Robert Kaufman Fabrics
Designer: Valori Wells
Finished size: 62 x 62 inches
Size: throw
Difficulty: enthusiastic novice, printed on the cover
Block: Log Cabin, one oversized block worked in rounds from a pieced center
Technique: log cabin piecing, with small rectangles pieced into the logs
Colors: twelve blue solids, palest at the center and darkest at the edges
Precuts: made from two roll-ups of 2 1/2 inch strips, so jelly roll friendly. Not built for fat quarters, layer cakes or charm packs
Download the Dusk 'til Dawn pattern PDF
One Block, Built From the Center Out
A log cabin quilt block is worked around a center square, with strips added around it in rounds. Dusk 'til Dawn does exactly that, at the size of a whole quilt.
The center isn't a single square. It's two 2 1/2 inch squares sewn together, with a 4 1/2 by 2 1/2 inch rectangle sewn below them, and the next piece goes down the side of that. From there the order never changes. The pattern says that once the center is built, the strips are always added counterclockwise: left side, then bottom, then right, then top, and around again.
That order is what makes it a log cabin and not a Courthouse Steps. In Courthouse Steps the strips go on opposite sides in turn. Here each strip runs past the end of the one before it, so the seams spiral out from the center.
There's a practical point hiding in that, too. Because each round has to be square before the next goes on, any drift you let into the center gets carried into every round after it. Measure the piece as you go, and if a round comes out a little long or short, fix it before you add the next one. It's much easier to fix on the small center than on a finished top.
The Little Rectangles Are the Design
Look at the cover photo and the eye goes straight to the small stacks of blocks breaking up each round. They're what turns a plain set of frames into something that looks like light coming through.
Each one starts as a 1 1/2 by 2 1/2 inch rectangle. Step 1 of the pattern has you take one strip of every color, stack them three deep, trim off the selvages and cut the whole lot into these rectangles. They're sewn side by side in little groups and set into the logs between two long pieces. Sewn in, each rectangle finishes 1 inch wide and 2 inches tall, the same height as the log it sits in.
Where they go is the part worth reading twice. Step 3 says that lighter values are pulled into the darker areas and darker values into the lighter ones, and that this is what creates the movement. So the palest rectangles sit out in the navy rounds near the edge, and the darkest ones sit in the pale blue near the center. If your groups all match the round they're in, that movement is lost.
The pattern also gives you permission to change it. It says the colors in the assembly diagram are suggestions, and that you may find yourself becoming a designer as you go. It suggests a design wall, even just a piece of batting or flannel pinned up, so you can step back and see the values before you sew.
We Checked the Arithmetic
We check the numbers of every pattern we publish, and this one adds up.
Every log is cut from a 2 1/2 inch strip and finishes at 2 inches, so each round adds 2 inches on every side and 4 inches to the width of the quilt. The cutting diagram shows that.
The outermost top strip is cut as two pieces, 35 1/2 and 23 1/2 inches, with a group of four rectangles between them. Finished, that's 35 plus 23 plus 4, which is 62 inches, the full width of the quilt. The top strip of the round inside it adds up to 58 inches, and the one inside that to 54. Four inches less each time, exactly as it should be.
The bottom strips come out 2 inches shorter than the top strip of the same round: 60, then 56, then 52. That isn't a mistake. The bottom goes on second, after the left side, so it covers the left strip but not the right one, which hasn't been sewn yet. The top goes on last and runs across both sides, so it's the full width of the round.
The binding works too. The pattern asks for half a yard and seven 2 1/2 inch strips across the width of the fabric. Seven strips fit in half a yard with a little to spare. The edge of a 62 inch square is 248 inches, and Yvonne adds 20 inches to that measurement for turning the corners, as she shows in our straight binding tutorial, so you need about 268. Joined, seven strips at the 42 inch width the pattern assumes give you about 279. That's enough, but only just, so cut every strip the full width of the fabric.
Reading the Cutting Diagram
This is the only part of the pattern that asks for patience. There's no cutting chart. Pages 4 and 5 are a full drawing of the quilt with the fabric letter and cut length written on every piece, F: 14 1/2 or D: 18 1/2 and so on, and you cut from that.
The pattern's own advice is good, so here it is in short. Cut the longest pieces from each strip first and use what's left for the short ones. Check off each piece on the diagram with a colored pen as you cut it, so you can find your place again. Start at the center, because Step 1 of the assembly has you cut only the pieces for the middle section before you sew anything.
On pressing, the notes at the front say to press seam allowances open unless otherwise noted, and the assembly steps do note otherwise. The center seams are pressed to one side, and as the rounds go on, every seam is pressed toward the outer edge of the quilt. If your pressing tends to stretch strips, our guide to pressing for crisper quilt blocks shows how to set a seam before you press it.
Fabrics and Palette That Suit This Pattern
The pattern lists twelve Kona Cotton solids: Cornflower and Stratosphere at the light end, then Astral, Copen, Surf, Regatta, Prussian, Windsor and Storm, and Navy, Indigo and Nautical at the dark end. It asks for two Dusk to Dawn palette roll-ups, a 2016 bundle that may no longer be on sale. Kona Cotton itself is still made, so the same palette can be put together from the solids.
You don't have to copy it, though. What the design needs is a long run of values in one color family, from very light to very dark, with enough steps between them that each round reads a shade deeper than the last. Twelve values is what the pattern uses. If you're not sure how to sort fabric by value, our guide on fabric value, color and texture explains why value does more of the work than color.
Solids matter more here than in most patterns. The small rectangles only show because they're a different value from the log around them. A busy print blurs that edge, and once it blurs, the light-in-the-dark effect goes. Tone-on-tone prints and batiks that read as solid from a few feet away will work. Large prints won't.
Any roll of 2 1/2 inch strips with a wide value range will do the job, in any color. Greens from pale mint to forest, or grays from white to charcoal, would give you the same slow change from one edge to the other.
For the backing, the pattern asks for 4 yards. That's two 72 inch lengths of 40 inch wide fabric sewn side by side. Our complete guide to quilt backing works through the margins. For the binding, our tutorial on binding a quilt on a sewing machine takes you from strips to finished edge. The sample was quilted with a repeated teardrop shape, which you can see in the cover photo.
If You Like This One
For a log cabin made the traditional way, in blocks, our free log cabin quilt pattern from Robert Kaufman, 72 inches square joins nine 24 inch blocks. Broken Perimeters uses the half log cabin, with the center moved into a corner. And if you'd like to see a log cabin built from a jelly roll on video first, a jelly roll log cabin walks through one from start to finish.
There are more in our free quilt patterns, and our quilt size chart has the mattress sizes if you want to add rounds to make it bigger. Each extra round adds 4 inches.
P.S. Cut the small rectangles first and lay a few groups out on the design wall before you cut a single long log. Where they sit decides how the whole quilt looks.
