Skip to content

King Cabin Crane Quilt – 2016

This quilt started with an inspiration.  I had the opportunity to purchase fabric from an estate of a woman who was a prolific seamstress.  While I purchased many gorgeous fabrics, the one I used as inspiration for this quilt really stood out.

I checked online and found other similar fabrics by the same company Timeless Treasures, but not this exact one.

This King Size Quilt was designed in Electric Quilt 7.  I am sharing all the information I have on how I designed this quilt so that anyone can make it for FREE.

Ultimately this quilt measures 115″ x 115″ after I trimmed the blocks down a bit – how you piece could make your quilt’s size differ

This is actually quite a basic design which consists of a single block – the Log Cabin. I spent a long time moving the blocks around and turning them this way and that until I came up with the layout you see here.

What makes this quilt so effective is the placement of the blocks, they create a 3-D effect.

The image above is the actual print-out from Electric Quilt 7.  Please note that I chose similar fabrics from the stock list in EQ7 to represent the fabrics that I ultimately chose.  It is very important when doing this to choose fabrics with similar values so that the effect is the same.  It is OK to choose a different pallet (I choose browns, greens and blues).

Blocks:

Below is a representation of the block used. This was designed as a 12″ x 12″ finished block.

The image above included example fabrics and is not those used in the final quilt.

The cutting directions are (in inches):

(A) 2×11
(B) 2×9.5
(C) 2×12.5
(D) 2×8
(E) 2×6.5
(F) 2×5
(G) 2×3.5
(H) 3.5×3.5

There are a total of 64 blocks; the blocks are 8 rows of 8 blocks. Around these blocks are two borders.  The borders pictured are 3” and 5” wide respectively.

Borders:

I did not do mitered corners. I was a bit excited to get this done, so didn’t take the extra time to do the math. Instead, I figured out what fabric I had left in the two border colors and made them as large as I could.  I measured 3X across the quilt to get my border length to ensure they would not be wonky when quilting.

Quilting:

I looked at this quilt for some time to come up with a quilting plan that I liked.  Because it was not necessarily symmetrical, I knew that whatever I did would create more than one secondary pattern.  Ultimately, I decided on splitting the block into two designs.

  1. The tan side held two feathers
  2. The blue side was a variable line that started at the middle and ended at the point.

This created some interesting intersections that I love.

The borders were done in two designs:

  1. The brown border was a filigree type design
  2. The blue crane border was segmented into triangles with double feathers similar to the blocks.

The color thread chosen was #3056 (rusty) OMNI by Superior Threads.  This burnt brown color added visibility to my quilting on the top of the quilt.

Binding:

Because I really hate waste, after I had done all the piecing and quilting and it was time to bind I had to make a decision. I either had go buy more fabric or use what I had which was not enough for one color to bind.  Of course I refrained from purchasing more.  Instead, I cut the green and blue into 44” x 2.25” strips and alternated them.  As you can see by the final images, the quilt turned out very well and I didn’t have to incur any additional expense.

Additional Quilt (not on purpose):

Have you ever gotten so excited about a project that you made a crucial mistake?  I sure did.  Instead of waiting for ALL my blocks to be complete and then trimming to the smallest one, I started trimming right away – and trimmed too much. Because of this, I had 24 smaller blocks.  Never fear, I just set them aside and created a corresponding lap quilt.  This can be used on a sitting room chair or a number of other uses.

My plan is to quilt this one the same as the larger version. Because of a shortage of corresponding fabrics, I will most likely have smaller borders though!

Feel free to give me a holler if you have any questions regarding this or other projects: EMAIL

So, what do you think?

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

%d bloggers like this: