Half a Log Variation

Log Cabin Variation by Anna Cook, about 1900

New Jersey

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4A-7F-9BD

Here's a cool pattern.

I was browsing through the New Jersey project

pictures and came across this quilt.

My first guess at the pattern:

It's 5 strips in a grid of 25.

Easy enough to draw in EQ7

And maybe easy enough to make.

100  blocks shaded the same way

but every other block is turned upside down.

100 inches x 100 inches with ten inch blocks.

I think I could keep that straight.

Which Anna had trouble doing. Some of her blocks look upside down.

She may have had a directionality problem and her design floor

was probably too small to scope the whole thing out.

Problems I can relate to.

I may be reading her block wrong. It may be

a more conventional version. What they call Half-a-Log in the South.

Here's a version of the Half-a-Log from my collection.

I've tried to copy it but this version is formidable.

I saw this fairly recent quilt in on line auction two years ago.

It's a variation on Anna's I think. But what's that extra log between blocks.

Too much for me.

But Anna's....

I learned some things from messing with Anna's quilt.

I tried to fix her repeat by Photoshopping the upside down blocks

right side up. But that didn't work.

Some of her lights just aren't light enough.

And red---it's really neither dark nor light here.

Her red is in the middle of a gray scale here---

It's not dark; it's not light.

Turning the red blocks upside down didn't help the patterning much.

It's interesting how she got that chrome orange strip to read as dark.

My plan. No red; no chrome orange.

Sort the fabrics into dark, mediums and lights and throw all the mediums back in the scrap box.

2-1/2" strips 

See more about the history of half a log cabin quilts here:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/08/half-log-history-and-free-pattern.html

UPDATE:

Mary couldn't resist the challenge to draft that formidable Half-A-Log above. Here's her drawing:

She says:

"I used EQ, and drew the block on a 9 x 9 grid. The red square is 3 x 3.
It would easily work as a 9” block. Cut the red square 3½” x 3½”, and the logs 1½” wide."

I think it was so formidable for me because you have to flip blocks over and I had trouble getting that dark, dark medium, medium and light shading consistent. Give it a try!