Another Top - “Hillside Houses”

I know some of you might think the only thing I make are things I design myself or what Rachael asks me to make.


Granted, that is the majority of what I make. However, that is not all I like to do nor is it all I ever make. I did just finish the bargello that was designed by Eileen Wright that I wrote about a few days ago.

Earlier this year I was looking for something and came across an interesting quilt that was called Hillside Houses. I thought it was interesting and I was intrigued. I considered trying to design something similar but different, but then just decided that the time involved was not what I was interested in doing.

I also decided that maybe just buying this pattern and making it would actually help me in making up my own pattern with this theme.

I want to try but didn’t really know how to begin such a thing. Since I’ve learned so much by first making something, I figured it was not money poorly spent if I would actually make up someone else’s pattern, so I went ahead and bought it from the designer’s Etsy shop.

Many years ago my husband and I went to Brazil for our 25th anniversary. There I saw the slums of Rio de Janeiro. That trip made a big impression on me. I took a tour - didn’t go wandering around by myself! These hillside houses made me think of that visit to the slums of Rio. I also thought of this interesting puzzle which I saw during last year’s Jigsaw Puzzle World Championship. Now, granted this puzzle is of townhouses, but I liked how they were all different colors. I decided to try it with this pattern.

Here’s a photo from Wikipedia of a favela in Rio which is a slum. I’d never seen houses built up on a hillside like this - seemingly just a mishmash of houses.

photo from Wikipedia

my very bad photo taken of houses built all over the hillside in Rio

I started by looking at the original design and looking at what solid fabrics I had. At first I thought I would use blenders, and then I realized that because they were houses - using the flat solids as if it was paint was just fine by me. I still have a wide variety of small pieces, so I just went with that.

Now, I’ve had this urge to make this quilt top up NOW. I decided that I would work on it these 10 days or so my husband was gone, so I started. Well, it didn’t take me that long.

I ended up making the blocks in a couple of days instead of taking the whole time. Once I had done the first two blocks, I saw the similarities in the sizes of pieces and it was much easier to cut up and put together.

I did not have great colors for some of the houses since the idea is to use a lighter and a darker of the same color - but was determined to use what I had. So I did.

I will probably go back and change the front door on the left. I am not happy that the green doesn’t show up against the blue.

I was trying for pastels, but went with the dark pastels as well. I did keep red out of the equation but actually didn’t just use pastels, as you can see! Then the royal blue just kind of stands out. Oh well. It’s what I get for not planning better first.

I also changed the roofs to a bit darker gray than the original lighter gray for blocks 1 and 2 (front left and front middle) because I could see that they didn’t show up as well against the lighter colors I was using. It took me a bit to get in the groove.

After scrounging through my solids for the last couple of days I probably have an hour’s job in just refolding what I didn’t use and putting the pieces away!

But now that I’ve done one of these types of house quilts, I believe I may have the idea on how to do my own. We’ll see. At least I used the pattern I bought!! :)

And yes, my sis has lots of solids. You can check them out here if this is something you need! I had also taken this pattern to Florida with me in hopes of doing it there with all the nice shades of fabrics she has in the store - it would have been easy to get a light/dark of pretty similar colors. Needless to say I didn’t get to it. Believe me, there were LOTS of things I never got to while in Florida including so many things we wanted to do in the store. But it’s okay. I did what I could.

In the end, after I change out the door for something with more white in it, I will like this one just fine. As I am staring at it I see that I need to flip the gold section 180 degrees as I put it in upside down (above the blue house in front). Naturally I see all the issues now - but it was a good introduction to this type of house quilt. Maybe I’ll make it again, but with blenders so I can do a better job with the colorations!

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!


Note - later on Saturday after I did a variety of things including cleaning up my dining room table so it could hold a quilt that is drying and fixing this quilt top -

Becky Petersen2 Comments