Eight of the nine blocks are the same. The ninth sits in the top left corner with no aqua in it at all, and once you've seen it you'll look for it every time.
This free log cabin quilt pattern rests on one block that finishes at 24 inches, and that number is the whole design. A 4 1/2 inch center square, then 2 1/2 inch strips added round after round, twenty logs in all, until the block measures 24 1/2 inches unfinished. Nine of those set three by three give you 72 inches square, with no sashing, no border and nothing else to piece.
A log cabin splits on the diagonal, light on one side and dark on the other, and that's as old as the block. What happens here is that each half alternates between two fabrics as the rounds build. One half works through two greens and the other through two pale aquas, so a fine stripe runs out from the center in both directions. The ninth block swaps its aquas for the greens and goes green all the way out. Same cutting, same construction, one substitution. It's what stops nine identical blocks from reading as wallpaper.
It comes from Robert Kaufman Fabrics, designed for them by Heather Jones, and written for Kona Cotton solids in Fog, Nectarine, Blue, Pickle and Wasabi. Nectarine is the coral square sitting at the center of all nine blocks. It dates from 2015 and runs to five pages.
The free log cabin quilt pattern at a glance
- Pattern: No name of its own. Published as the free pattern for the Summit collection
- Brand: Robert Kaufman
- Designer: Heather Jones
- Finished size: 72" square
- Size category: Throw
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Block: Log Cabin
- Technique: Strip piecing, built in rounds from the center
- Colorway: Shown in Kona Cotton solids, Fog, Nectarine, Blue, Pickle and Wasabi
- Fat quarter friendly: No
- Jelly roll friendly: No
- Layer cake friendly: No
- Charm pack friendly: No
Those four no answers are all the same answer. The logs are cut 2 1/2 inches wide, which is jelly roll width, but one fabric alone needs 23 of them in a single color and no assorted roll will give you that. This one comes off yardage.
Download the free pattern PDF. Five pages, with the cutting list, both block diagrams and the quilt assembly layout, and nothing to print at actual size.
Fabrics and palette that suit this log cabin quilt pattern
Solids are doing something particular here, and it pays to know what before you swap them out. A log cabin lives on the line between its two halves. A print with movement in it softens that line, and the block starts to look like a pile of strips instead of a shape. Five flat colors keep every seam reading as a seam, which is how a quilt with no piecing trick in it still carries across a room.
If you change the palette, the thing to protect is the gap between the halves. The two greens can sit close to each other, and so can the two aquas, because that alternation is meant to read as a stripe and not as a contrast. What can't sit close is the green against the aqua. That's the diagonal, and the diagonal is the quilt. Our solids are where to start, and because this one is cut from yardage rather than precuts, fabric by the yard is the other place to look.
Two things are worth having ready before you begin. The cutting list comes to 69 strips cut the full width of the fabric, which is a good deal more cutting than the sewing suggests, and a blade that's been in the cutter since spring will start dragging long before you're through. The other is reach. The longest logs are cut at 24 1/2 inches, so a long ruler saves you sliding a short one along and hoping the line held.
One number to check as you cut. Fabric B is listed as 23 strips, and the pieces it then asks you to subcut come to 918 inches, which needs 24 strips at the 40 inch width the pattern assumes. Cut the extra one and you won't come up short at the end.
There are more of these on our free quilt patterns page, and another free log cabin in the archive if you'd rather work in prints than solids.
