Row by Row house blocks

A long time ago, in a place far away, I quilted with a lovely group of ladies in Beaumont. Alberta, that is, not Texas! Before we moved south to Calgary, we started an exchange of row by row quilts. Each of us started a quilt with a row of blocks, passed our blocks on to the next person on the list and they were to add a row. Unfortunately, the quilts stalled on their journey around the group and finally, 8 or 9 years after they were started, I got my quilt top back! And now, after sitting in my UFO pile for a few years, it's time to finish it.

The theme for my row by row quilt was houses. I love that this quilt has pieces of my friend's creativity and look forward to finishing it. I have some lovely earthy prints to border it with and am thinking of adding some flying geese blocks to the top. I also am thinking of putting "Home Sweet Home" somewhere on it as well - not quite sure where that will turn up, but I'll think of something!

Have you had a project with an extremely long shelf life? What do you need to motivate you to get it finished?

--Ann

Almost 9 years to complete a Quilt?

As a farewell gift before we moved here, my previous guild, The Blackgold Quilt Patch, in Leduc, Alberta gave me a set of house blocks that were pieced by the members at that time. These alternated between being on my design wall to being stashed away in the closet as I hemmed and hawed about how to put them together into a quilt. Originally, the thought was to have one large quilt with cobblestone streets between the houses. Well, that would have resulted in a King size plus quilt and no matter how I rearranged the blocks, it didn't look quite right.

Next, I spread the blocks out on the floor and split them in two groups, with an assortment of sizes in each group. Playing around with the layout became more fun with the smaller number of blocks and soon I had an arrangement that I actually liked! I quickly took out my camera and snapped a couple of pictures. The same was done with the second set of blocks and again, another picture.

So, now I had the blocks arranged and it was time to figure out what to put in between. The cobblestone fabric I bought originally just didn't do anything for the blocks, so they were sent back to the closet while ideas peculated in my head. I printed the photos out and hung them up by my sewing machine, hoping they would "talk" to me. And they did!

The colour of my hardwood floor looked great with the colours that were in the house blocks, but things still looked a little washed out. Then I pulled out my Sharpie marker and drew a black border around each of the blocks in the photo - ta-da! Here's the happy result:

House blocks Quilt #1 - blue tones

House blocks Quilt #2 - red tones

These quilts are identical in size and will someday be put on the bunk beds that will go in the guest bedroom when it is finally vacated by the youngest son.

What's the longest it's taken you to finish a quilt?

--Ann