Blue and White Houses

I haven't seen anything exciting in the Olympics so far. I'm not sure if that's because our channel only shows the odd events (for the last summer olympics we got a lot of shot-putting and women weightlifters) or the events I want to see just haven't been on yet.

I just sent an email to Bonnie yesterday telling her I couldn't focus my brain on any more lessons, but I surprised myself this morning with a bit of energy and focus. Focus has been difficult lately - I'm ready for vacation.

I figured I'd better give ya'all some basic instructions on what to do with your houses after you have them made. Not that I don't think you could have figured it out on your own, cuz of course you could have. Putting it all together uses the exact same technique as you used making the houses (or any other bit of improvisational piecing):

• If it's too long, cut it off
• If it's too short, sew something on

You could add over-sized sashing to the blocks, and then cut them all down to the same size. You could make blocks the same height, so you that you could sew them in rows; or the same width so you could sew the blocks in columns.

Another way is to sew the blocks together however they fit best. Two blocks the same height? They can go together. Start arranging your blocks that way. You can make a rectangle here, a row there... Add fabric where you want and need it.

As an example, here's my Blue and White Houses quilt. I've actually posted it before, way back in my very first post in June. This was the second house quilt I made using Gwen's liberated method.

If you look closely you'll see larger chunks of some of my prized batik fabric. It's in there just because it's gorgeous and I love it. And it works well, if it hadn't it wouldn't be there. You'll see smaller chunks of fabric here and there too, some because I wanted them there and others were there just so the quilt would fit together.

Here's a detail of the quilt (look in the lower left of the quilt). Some of the houses in this quilt have very few details. You'll notice a tiny one here that isn't anything more than a 1" rectangle with a roof.

The house on the left is on the river. That fish batik is one that I knew I wanted a chunk of and that was sewn on before I started worrying about how these blocks would go together.

The house in the upper right is caught in a whirlwind. I sewed on oversize strips, then angled my ruler and cut the block so that the house was spinning. The two little houses were sewn together and then added to the bottom of the whirlwind block. They needed a strip of fabric at the bottom so that this three-house unit could then be sewn on to the fish river house. Any bit of fabric left hanging off the unit was whacked straight off.

This is what the larger seams of the Blue and White Houses quilt look like. The shorter seams would have been sewn first. The last seam would have been to add the row along the bottom.

And here is a more detailed shot showing all the seams joining the blocks together.

Does this help? Any questions? Ask now or you may not get an answer until March...