The Log Cabin - A comfy quilt for your safe haven
The Log Cabin quilt is the perfect design to bring a sense of comfort and safety to your home, featuring a design that can be easily varied. Whether using cotton prints for a more traditional look or velvet for a luxurious feel, the log cabin quilt block can be used to highlight your personal taste of home and family.
The Log Cabin block is a classic quilt original, with symbolism that evokes nostalgia of the old days of the American Frontier. Written references go all the way back to 1863 when a Cleveland quiltmaker won a prize for their Log Cabin Quilt at the Ohio State Fair. The original homes of the early pioneer living on the American Frontier was a log cabin, a structure that protected and warmed the early settlers, their only defence against a wild and unforgiving landscape. For many early pioneer quilters, in those days nearly almost women, their daily lives inspired their crafting designs and the log cabin held special significance.
Taken from The Antiques Almanac
These ideas of protection and safety are sewn into the very design itself, featuring a small square of warmth surrounded by strong panels or logs that make up the home. Traditionally, the small square in the centre would be a colour that stood out from the rest of the block colours. This represented the "heath of the home", the place where the family would gather to teach the youngsters, tell stories, make tea and keep warm. The panels surrounding the heath represented the logs of the cabin, protecting the family.
The warm colours on the left represent the cabin, while the cooler colours represent the world outside. The pink centre square represents the heart of the home.
The use of colour in the Log Cabin quilt block is significant too. Apart from the difference in the centre square, the colours for the logs could be separated diagonally, with warm colours representing the warm inside of the cabin and cool colours for the outside. Another theory has been the warm colours represent the sunny side of the cabin and the side that is in shade. For my example, I tried to show the warm inside, with the centre a rosy, warm pink and the outside cool with greenery and a starry sky over the roof. For more variations on colour use in the log cabin, click this link. For an instructional on how to sew this quilt block, visit the ladies at the Missouri Star Quilting Company here.
An interesting rumour throughout history persists that the Log Cabin was used as one of the quilt blocks to signal run away slaves accessing the Underground Railroad in the which reached its peak between 1850 to 1860. Oral histories have claimed that a Log Cabin quilt block with a black centre square would signal a safe house, where an escaping slave could rest. A log cabin with a light centre square signalled that the house was not safe. It was said that these quilts would be left outside on windowsills or clotheslines for people to see.
While this theory is contested due to lack of written evidence, it is important to remember that even being involved in the Underground Railroad could endanger your life and people would have been wary of writing a record of these codes. Another important point is that sometimes all we have left of an event is oral histories. It would be a shame to totally discredit these "Railroad Codes" simply because the evidence that we do have isn't written.
Whether or not the rumours are true, the log cabin is a quilt design that has brought a sense of comfort, safety, warmth and family for many years.
