Tutorial for Tuesday - 4 Houses Cushion

Do you have some layer cakes squares left over or some fat eight's or even scraps that you want to use up? This 24"pillow/cushion project might just be of interest. I had great fun making this so thought I'd write it up as my first project based tutorial.

I used 12 layer cake squares and some background fabric to make this and have enough left over for another set of roofs to make a matching pair of cushions. If you go with matching roofs it's possible to do this with even less fabric squares.



I have downloadable piecing instructions here including how to make the half rectangle triangles for the roof. Otherwise step by step instructions are below with lots of photos!

I stacked the four layer cake squares together that I wanted for the houses and cut 3 rows 2.5" wide and the remaining 1.5" wide.

1. The first row is for the windows and doors. Sub cut two 2.5" squares and one 2.5" x 3.5 rectangle.
2. Sub-cut row 2 into one 2.5" square and four 2.5" x 1.5" rectangles for the window sashing.
3. Cut row 3 into two rectangles 2.5" x 4.5" long
4. Lastly take row 4 and cut 2 rectangles 1.5" x 4.5" long

Lay out as follows and mix and match windows and doors for a nice contrast

I chain pieced the sashing on either side of the windows first, then the top and bottom. There will be 2 of these House units per house.

 Sew the mantel to the door and sew a House unit on either side of the door unit.

For the roofs you will need 2 rectangles 5.5" x 6.5" in background fabric and 2 in patterned fabric matching or in the same colour way .

Place BGF and one of the patterned squares right sides together. Mark a quarter inch from top and bottom and draw a diagonal line from mark to mark.

Repeat for the second matching rectangles but the slope going in the opposite direction. This is important to get a left hand half rectangle triangle and a right hand one to make the roof.

Cut along this line through both rectangles. You only need one of each for each house.

Take a BGF triangle and a patterned triangle and lay them right sides together like this. Yes it looks wonky but this is correct!

Put the remaining aside for a second house or cushion if you don’t want matching roofs. Sew with a 1/4" seam along the long edge.

I chain pieced them to speed up the process.

Do the same for the opposite sloping triangles. You should have 4 of each kind. Press the seams and open.

Match up right to left hand triangles to make the roof.

These rectangles are oversized and will need to be trimmed down. I squared up the short edge where I am sewing them together and trimmed the whole roof down afterwards. It is easier to do this to keep the point at the roof top.

Trim to 10.5" x 4.5" keeping 1/4" at the top. Don't worry if this doesn't work out. I clipped points and the roof still looks great when its all put together.

Attach the roof to the House body. Don't do what I did and attach the roof to the bottom of the house! Dope that I am I did this and didn't notice until I had the whole thing quilted. It's my cushion and I can live with a wonky version! 

Attach 2 houses together to form a row - yes this is the house I sewed the roof to the wrong side! So now you know not to do it like me!

Cut 4 strips from the background fabric 9.5" x 2.5" and sew to either side of the 2 row of houses.
Cut 3 strips 25" x 2.5" for sashing between rows and top and bottom of the rows.

And you should have a finished cushion top measuring 24.5" square.

I layered with wadding/batting & utility fabric and quilted using this stencil pattern:

I made a simple envelope cushion with 2 pieces of fabric measuring 24.5" x 18" (instructions in the piecing pattern). You can trim to 24" if you want a plumper fit.  And here's my wonky version! Hope you like this project!

Finish it Friday!

It all started with this design I made up on threadbias.

Then it became 4 houses.

I originally thought I'd use the my leftover Coquette layer cake squares from Bounce but I think they are the perfect colours for a baby quilt so I bought some Tula Pink Prince charming squares

I got my neutral Bella solid material for the background in the post yesterday and so thought I would try and finish my 4 Houses project today.

 I even free motion quilted it (first time doing this!)  And then after quilting I realised I had made a piecing mistake -can you spot it?

Oh and Gordon finished Wilbur's kennel too!  Isn't it cool?

But Wilbur doesn't sleep in the kennel - he owns all the sofas, chairs, dog beds and now it seems all the cushions too!  Even the wonky ones.

I finished this at 11.45 so a Friday finish! Love how dogs don't get red eye but creepy blue eye. I hope to take better daylight pictures tomorrow but for now I'm pleased to be finished.  Linking up to 


and Finish it up Friday

Sunday Lack of Stash!

I decided to make my 4 Houses project this weekend.  I had some layer cake squares in Coquette left over from my Bounce stars project but wanted to save them for a baby quilt I'm planning for a friend so I bought a pack of 10" squares of Tula Pink's Prince Charming range.  There are 20 squares in the pack so I had great fun during the week picking the colours for the roofs and houses.

I kept Prince Charming for a future project.  He's just so cool I couldn't cut him up for a roof!

I tested some background colours initially thinking I'd go with white but this fawn colour is a really good neutral against the Prince Charming colours.  Only thing is, I only had enough on hand for an applique project "A Dog's Life" that I've had on the back burner.  With no background fabric on hand I've stalled on this until I can buy some more.

 So having the house to myself and time on my hands I decided to make my second Swoon block.

I think I prefer the small scale print in the middle and the larger in the corners as in my first block but I like the colours overall and I'm loving that Kona Midnight navy.  I very nearly used it for my 4 houses but figured Navy might be a bad choice for a living room where 2 dogs sneak onto the couch.

Time now for a cup of tea and a bit of online shopping to find my fawn/beige background fabric!

Half Rectangle Triangles

Half Rectangles are tricky. They are very similar to Half Square Triangles but there is a little trick to making them. I needed a roof for a pieced house I was designing and it took three attempts to get these right.

Of course I could have paper pieced them but I got stubborn after attempt number 2 and was determined to figure it out. I thought I'd share with you what I did wrong and how I finally got what I wanted.

For the house above I wanted to use a layer cake, so I was working with a maximum size of 10". I came up with the bright idea of piecing it using Half rectangle Triangles and sewing them together. The size I needed for the roof wasn't a nice 2:1 like a flying goose but 10" wide by 4" high finished dimensions.

Well, on the first attempt the mistake I made was to treat the rectangle like a square and forget that rectangles are not symmetrical. I started with 5.5" x 6.5" rectancles, deciding to go big and trim down later.

Placing the fabric right sides together and using the HST method of drawing the diagonal then sewing 1/4" either side gives a very wonky result like this:

Oops!  I have no excuse, I knew it wasn't going to work as I was cutting it, but I figured keep going and I'll discover where I went wrong.  The trick is to rotate one of the rectangles and lay them out long edges across each other.  Here's the layout using the triangles I finally used in the roof:

This gives two identical half square triangles which will give me the left roof. You need to do another with the diagonal line going in the opposite direction to get the right hand part of the roof because half rectangle triangles aren't symmetrical.  That is well stick in my head now!

I did this and got 4 Half Rectangle Triangles and then I trimmed two of them down to the dimensions I wanted for my roof. To make up 10.5 x 4.5 I trimmed them to 4.5 x 5.5 as I will lose 1/4" in the middle when I join them.

On attempt number 2 I didn't pay enough attention trimming and ended up with rectangles with seam allowance for the bottom of the roof but clipped the top off the house!

Of course I only noticed this when I had sewn it to the base of my house. Not the end of the world, I could probably live with it in the project I'm making for myself but I had hoped to put this up on my blog as my first ever pattern so it's got to be right.

At this point I figured I'd take a break and go check out blogland - yes I really should have done this earlier!

 I found these three tutorials on Half Rectangle Triangles confirming for me that my starting dimensions were ok, my layout of fabric right sides together was on the right track but what I had not done was to take my 1/4" seam allowance into consideration when aligning the fabric or drawing my diagonal.  Oops again!

The modern quilt guild

Wayne Kollinger's Quilt Blog

The Busy Bee Quilt Shop

So third time around, I decided to try Wayne Kollinger's method and started my diagonal 1/4" up the rectangle both sides.

Ta-dah!!! Success at last.

On this final attempt, I decided if it wasn't going to work out I would just paper piece it . Well it did work out but now that I have the idea of paper piecing in my head of course I'm going to have to try that too! So I've downloaded the free software Quilt Assistant and once I practice with it a bit more I'll tell you all about it.

For now I'm just happy to have the test piece for my cushion/pillow project pieced and measuring the right dimensions!

WIP Wednesday - House Block Design & Half Rectangle Triangles

My favourite project that I have made so far is a Scnibbles pattern from Miss Rosie's quilt company called Full House.  It's neat little pattern that uses two charm packs to make a baby quilt.  I've seen some traditional house blocks like schoolhouse and decided to have a go making my own on Threadbias.

On the Threadbias website there is a quilt design tool that you can use for free as long as you are happy with a 9" workspace.  If you want to use the full tool and workspace you can by taking part in the design challenges Threadbias hosts or paying a monthly subscription.  I played around with it and managed to come up with the house above using Cocquette Fabric by Chez Moi for Moda.  It was great fun.  I liked my house so much I made four of them and put them together to make a pieced front for a 24" cushion I want to cover. 

To make this involves a bit of piecing so I worked out how to put it together and the fabric requirement to make this and had great fun playing with Maths.  Adding borders would get me to my needed size

.

So far so good.  Realising the roof of the house could be a bit tricky I decided to test my design yesterday evening.  I now understand the importance of pattern testing.  I'd forgotten there is a knack to Half Rectangle Triangles and that I would need a right one and a left one. 

So this is where I am with this project, pattern mostly written, cutting and piecing all ok except the roof!  Going to have another go at this again tonight!

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