Yeah - and a whip stitch would be more for holding two pieces of fabric flat on top of each other + edging. This is more like you are connecting two panels with a kind of lace that you want to be fairly visible.

The book’s author (this is Book of Colonial Needlwork by Elizabeth Musheno) points out that most American colonial women were kind making it up as they went along and got their decorative motifs from every day life - so it would make sense that they would think of bundles of firewood.