Back in July I had the distinct opportunity to take my first quilt class! It was a gift from my wonderful mother-in-law, and we took the class together. We followed this great free pattern for a house quilt. I used only scraps from my stash, which gave me a great opportunity to use up those last pieces of some beloved fabrics. Here’s my mostly- finished quilt top (it needs one more border I think):
Here’s some close-ups of a few of my blocks:
As you can see, I had some trouble with the top piece matching up with the other two. I did a lot of fiddling, changing my seam width, changing the width of that middle piece – in the end I just trimmed all my blocks down to the same size, careful not to take too much because then I’d mess with the 1/4″ seams that make the corners of the houses. Anyway, a lot can be hidden with some careful cutting and sewing.
Here’s a short tutorial on how to make the corners for the roof! This was the most exciting part of the class … learning a cheater’s way to do triangles and corners!
Use a pencil and draw a line from one corner to the other on your 3.5″ square.
Pin and sew the square to the end of your roof piece, following the line you just drew.
I learned to sew that seam just a hair’s width to the right of my drawn line. This helps when it’s time to fold your triangle over.
Fold the triangle up and match the corners with the other side of your square, and your roof piece.
This part is optional, but I chose to do it to cut down on the overall bulk of my quilt. Trim off the excess of the original square 1/4″ from your sewn seam.
It’ll look like this.
Do the same thing on the other side of the roof piece. Yes, the pieces will overlap at the top.
Your finished roof! Trim the excess on the back again. Do the same with the other roof piece, sewing a background square to the right side of the piece.
Once you’ve sewn your three strips together, they’ll look like this:
Sew them together, and voila!
This is Marge, our teacher for this project, holding up my quilt. She was such a lovely teacher! The class was taken at Cotton & Chocolate in Thousand Oaks, a lovely quilt shop if you’re ever in the area.
