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!

My First Swap - Fussy Square Swap Block

I joined a swap on flickr to make 12 of these fussy cut squares measuring 4.5" each.  How could I resist - they are so cute!  Being in Ireland I made mine this weekend as quick as I could to make sure they get to Amanda in Texas in time.  Not sure if the stripey ones on the bottom work with asymmetric lines - should I remake them to have the lines radiating out from centre?

It was a little difficult finding novelty prints for the centre square that fit nicely and didn't get cut off like this one.  My Halloween prints were far too big and Christmas fabric is already allocated.

So I stuck to Puppies from Puppy Park by Riley Blake.  I'll keep this one and make 3 more to add to the 12 I get. I hope to make a 4 x 4 cushion cover out of them.  This was fun and the cute factor is massive.  If you want to try them Amanda has the paper piecing pattern on her blog here.  They are quite addictive!

Linking up to

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

WIP Wednesday - Still Swooning

Thing's are a real work in progress this week.

Wilburs new Kennel!

Wilbur is overseeing the work but is not  a hard taskmaster.  Don't worry Wilbur you still have the sofa - its got your name on it !


Tula Pink Blocks for City Sampler sew-a-long over at Sew Sweetness - 6 Blocks cut ready for sewing.










HST done for Star Surround Quilt-A-Long over at Happy Quilting.  I feel a bit of a cheat on this one as I'm doing the 40" baby quilt so only one big block required!  I'm loving these colours can't wait to make the flying geese and see it coming together. 









Still Swooning-a-long on block number 3.  These are my favourite colours so far!

I even found a place to keep them together until all 9 are done.  I just love how pretty this block looks in all the various colours.  

My friend Mary wants one with as a giant cushion.  I'll add it to my to do list!  I'm not one for making the same thing over and over but I really like making this block.

Linking up to

Doctor Who-A-Long update

Now that my machine is talking to me again I made some progress on my paper pieced blocks for the Doctor Who-A-Long hosted by Whims and Fancies and Trillium Design on flickr here.  I struggled with this spaceship block.  There are a lot of tiny seams in centre but I do love how the colours turned out in this one.

This wolf along with K-9 are my favourites so far.  Those teeeth are cool - I love how Soma's design made them so pointy! That's 5 out of 6 released blocks completed so far.  If it wasn't absolutely pouring out of the heavens outside I'd take a photo of all 5.

I'm loving this project.  It is challenging and my paper piecing skills are getting better, slowly but surely!

Linking up to Finish it up Friday (a late finish I know but I really feel a sense of achievement on this block after my sewing meltdown and all!) and

Star Surround Quilt-A-Long

Melissa at Happy Quilting is hosting a Quilt-A-Long of her pattern the Star Surround.  There are lots of options in terms of size and layout from 16" cushion to bed quilt.

I'm joining in and making a 1 x 1 Star 40" baby quilt.  I figure I can get this done in between my Swoon-A-Long, Finish-A-Long goals, Doctor Who and City Sampler Blocks.  Well that's the plan anyway!

Maybe because the clashy bright fabric contest was on my mind I chose pastel purple, yelllow, bright blue and white solids as my colours.

They are bright alright and I love them!

This week was cutting and Melissa is hosting a link up, as well as a flickr page.

 If you are looking to join in, the schedule is here.  This is going to be a fun project!

Sewing Machine Maintenance - feed dogs and a broken needle!

Well I had hoped to have a Finish for Friday.  I was happily making my paperpieced Doctor Who block of a space ship when my sewing machine had a meltdown.  It was not my Viking's fault - it was all mine.

I left a pin in my paperpieced block that as I was sewing along the seam became undone from the fabric and got stuck in the feed dogs. Really stuck.  Lodged between the feet and wouldn't come out stuck!

I yelled for Gordon's help as you do, hoping very much he would have a pliers or smaller screwdriver to take off the throat plate.  After much faffing about and very mumbled curses we got the throat plate off, went wow at the amount of lint that had gathered since I last cleaned it (in my defence I have been using my Husqvarna Viking a lot!) and freed the pin.  All good so far.

Throat plate back on, needle threaded, good to go?  Nope.  Feed dogs wouldn't move the fabric.  Slight panic, take whole thing apart again clean some more, break a needle, curse a little bit louder this time, turn it off and back on again - no joy.

Having no clue what to do next I decided to lower the feed dogs and raise them up again.  They wouldn't come up. 

At this point, about midnight, and thinking it was going to have to go in for repair I turned it off and unplugged it.  Instead of going to sleep I googled "feed dogs stuck after lowering" and the answer would you believe is to turn the hand wheel a few turns - voila magic - feed dogs popped back up and all is working again.

Now I hope to finish the block tonight, oil my machine, apologise to it for abusing it and promise as Gordon put it to me - to be more careful next time!