Friday, May 29, 2009

Log Cabin Knitting

I am trying my hand at Log Cabin knitting, which is based on the quilt pattern of the same name and is described in Mason-Dixon Knitting; The Curious Knitters' Guide. I'm very pleased with the results so far and would like to explore this pattern further. Imagine the color combinations and resulting patterns--all light on one side and dark on the other; or concentric squares (can there be such a thing?) of different colors, shading out from the center.
Basically, you start with a garter stitch square in what will be the middle of your blanket, bind off all but one stitch, give the work a quarter turn, then add another strip to the edge of the first by picking up stitches and continuing to knit, then add more strips in the same way. It's easy, it's fun, and it's really really addictive. For the complete directions from Kay Gardiner's half of the Mason-Dixon Knitting blog, go to the 2004 archives and scroll down a bit. Or buy the book! Or check it out from your library, of course.





These photos are of my second Log Cabin pattern baby blanket, which is still in progress. The first blanket was a dud--I hated the colors and dismantled it before getting very far.


4 comments:

clairz said...

Now that I am looking quite carefully at that photo, I can see that if I had made the center square in a color other than the light blue, the color pattern would have made a little more sense.

Traditional log cabin quilts start with a red square, symbolizing the fireplace in the log cabin, but that just wouldn't have worked here.

Ah, well, live and learn. The beauty of making baby blankets and giving them away is that I can keep on experimenting.

Linda said...

Check out Trish's blocks at "Adventures of a Rogue Knitter"
http://adventuresofarogueknitter.blogspot.com/2009/05/happenings.html

Her squares are on her 5/25 post.

clairz said...

Linda, thank you for that link. The log cabin blocks there are beautiful and are giving me an idea of how to use up some of my yarn bits on the next baby blanket.

Quiet Paths said...

I like this pattern; it is so spare and unique. Nice!