Heart and Home

One of my earliest quilts, made for my daughter's twin bed when she was about 4 was a "neighborhood" of houses surrounded by lawns of dark green with tiny pastel flowers. She loved that quilt, but it did not stand the test of time. When I found the same flowered "lawn" fabric years later, I bought it with the intent to make another house quilt. I still have the book that the house block pattern came from; Projects for Blocks and Borders by Marsha McCloskey, so I started by making the house blocks, then connected them with lawns from the fabric that inspired the quilt, resulting in an ordered subdivision of family homes. I then added a 5" border of pink hearts on a dark blue background with swirling stars. The hearts are pieced from a pattern by Sherri McConnell that I found in the Feb 2022 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. To add another 20" border so that the finished quilt would fit my granddaughter's double bed in our home, I made more house blocks, only this time they are log cabins in the woods. The houses are spaced farther apart and surrounded by large pine trees. The trees are from a pattern designed by Rachelle Craig that I found in the Feb 2023 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. The large hearts in the four corners of the quilt are from Elaine Huff's blog, fabric 406 (which I found on Pinterest).

Hailey loves to sew with me, and one day when she visited and I was in the middle of making this quilt, she pleaded with me to do a sewing project with her. I had three heart blocks that didn't get used in the quilt, so we made a large pillow together. She sat on the table with my container of scrap fabric and chose each piece and handed them to me to sew. We made a back from soft purple flannel and stuffed it to the perfect density for propping up in bed to read.