"Schoolhouses" - on the Softer Side - top finished
Am I the only one who thinks that the color of cars is a little boring?
Come on - why aren’t there more pastel cars out there?
I mean - silver, white/cream, gray, black, blue, red and some sort of dark greens or taupes, tans, browns. What you don’t see very often is anything that looks like pastels.
Ok, I’m sure it has to do with resell value, but anyway - they could add teal, aqua, purple, dark pink and make cars a lot more interesting. Add more pale pinks and light greens and blues and oranges and corals….how much more interesting would driving be?
But what about houses?
Here in Poland houses tend to be pretty much white, cream or possibly yellow or a few other colors. Thankfully when we first came to Poland I think there were five colors of house paint - white, brown, and 3 more. I can’t remember the other three. Since we now have any color we want, that is in the past.
But in reference to this top -
I wanted to make something else “pretty” - something that just soothed me. Maybe that’s because I was coughing so much and just felt like I needed some smooth and soft - maybe it was my throat or my congestion - but I am in love with these blocks.
I couldn’t believe that I actually did it. I used a template. This block uses a combination of templates and just cutting pieces based on a ruler - not a template.
But the good thing about this top is that it is based on a free block - which, as you know, I like!
This block is from McCalls quilting. The block is found here. I would like to encourage you to go ahead and download this NOW in case you are even remotely interested as they may take it away from being available for free. Of course, it is actually a classic block - been around since the late 1800s - just not this particular pattern - and I don’t want to rewrite and redraw this for you - so just use this!
I used paper - not a piece of plastic. It can be done with a printed piece of paper and if you are ultra careful when cutting - just focus on what you are doing and be careful not to cut your pieces that need the template - you can do it without template plastic though it most certainly would make it easier.
Here are the layouts - one without the lines and the other with lines.
I’ve seen this with a few other layouts - and I like this layout because the sashing pieces make it so that the blocks are surrounded with white - which I like. I’ve gotten to the place where I really like a little space around blocks like this and not so much when they go right up next to the sashing so there is no space. At least not this time.
I made two blocks of each colorway - one facing each way. in other words, the schoolhouses are mirror images of each other. Since there are 42 blocks here, that meant that I used 21 different fabrics. I actually was trying for a balance of pinks, blues, greens, lavenders, and corals/oranges. I only put two yellows in there and it is pretty bright - but not “too much” so - but just enough to make a bit of a sparkle. Two of the orange blocks are also a bit darker than the rest.
I made it in the colorway that I wanted to work on right now - and that is colorful/pastels as mentioned in the blog post about that last quilt top.
So, I chose all florals - pastels. Most of the fabrics I used here are from Concord Fabrics and are probably considered vintage. I wanted to make this classic, very old block in a fabric that was also ‘old looking’.
I used leftover pieces and made the corner blocks which are actually 25 patches. They look like this:
The sashing is made of 5 strips - white/color/white/color/white (the first row - the second and fourth are opposite that layout).
By making the sashing in 5 parts, and putting the white on the outsides, it made it possible that my blocks were surrounded with white. And that is exactly what I wanted.
The final top is light and airy and soft and pretty. I’m not sure what tradition says about it - but I do like it.
And that’s it. This top ended up being about 89”x103”. It’s a nice sized queen sized quilt top.
Have a great day wherever you are reading this! Thanks for coming along with me!
Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!
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