Kate

Kate says: For a long time, I've been considering making a quilt with house or other building blocks. Not being much of an appliquer, however, I was reluctant to take on such a project. Although there are pieced building blocks, some of them lovely, I felt it might be hard to come up with enough variety for a great quilt. This swap seemed like the perfect opportunity to ask for houses or other buildings.

My block preferences were pretty much anything goes, with a preference for dark, strong, bright colours over pastels, though some pastels could certainly be incorporated. I was happy to have blocks as realistic (or not) as the maker liked.

I decided that I'd like to have 20 blocks total, to make the quilt 4x5 blocks, so I made a block myself and asked my friend Lana, a longarm quilter, to make the final block.

The resulting blocks were absolutely stunning. So much variety, in style, method and topic. Some members made blocks that had geographical significance, like Kay's Singapore Shop Houses, Elaine's Maori Meeting House or Ingrid's Irish Cottage. Some used other specialities of the quilter, for instance, all the fabric in Meg's block is hand dyed. It was very hard deciding how to handle the blocks. It was a good thing we decided to show at Hever, or the blocks would probably have been sitting in a pile for at least another 5 years until I worked up enough courage to touch them!

In the end, I decided to complete this quilt by the quilt-as-you-go method, something I'd not tried before, but which allowed me to do more detailed quilting within the individual blocks than would otherwise be practical. An added bonus of this method (as opposed to sending it out to be longarmed, for example) was that I got to appreciate the blocks all over again, and notice lots of detail I hadn't really absorbed before.

I also made myself a copy of all the blocks I made for others, with the intention of turning them into a hanging to cover some of the shelves in my sewing room which store fabric. Some day, that project may actually get finished!

While I wouldn't describe myself as a beginning quilter, I am not by any means an expert. I prefer piecing to applique, and standard machine piecing to paper piecing or hand piecing (though I'll willingly do a bit of paper piecing now and then). I enjoy looking at all kinds of quilts, and am happy to receive all kinds of quilts or blocks, but prefer to make quilts that are fairly geometric, with simple shapes and not too many half square triangles. I'm a firm believer in strip piecing and think of the rotary cutter as a gift from the quiting gods.

I am a transplanted Yank who has been in the UK for over 10 years. My only real regret about no longer living in the US is the relative cost of fabric in the two countries. I have three small children, two of whom like to help me sew (the smallest one no doubt will in time, but hasn't got there yet) - this sometimes makes my quilting life very interesting.

individual blocks

proposed block layout (EQ5 sketch)

finished quilt at Hever, Sept 2003

blocks made by Kate for others