Thank you for the great ideas. I love the site with the graphs, etc. Many useful things there, not necessarily for quilting but just in general. I remember a few years ago there was a website (I think it was associated with one of the fabric stores) that had a free quilt planner in it but I don't remember what the site was.
What I ended up dong is getting a page/template of log cabin blocks and printed a bunch of those, then cut the size down to 50% and printed those. Did the same with courthouse block. I'm planning my next project and would like it to be a combination of 4" and 8" log cabin blocks or possibly courthouse blocks, so this should work for me. Pictures attached of what I'm talking about.
However . . . . it got me thinking, for someone inventive . . . . paper is flimsy and little pieces are hard to work with when moving them all over and trying different layouts. What would be nice would be to have a lot of small blocks of log cabins or courthouse steps (either wood or plastic or possibly made up of the same material as magnetic poetry is made of). These would be much easier to work with and they wouldn't fray or blow away. Or maybe these are already out there? Or maybe this idea would go nowhere because people would rather do it on their computer. Personally, for something this simple I'd rather move the blocks manually than on a computer.