I fell in love with this fierce ladies mini quilt pattern a while time ago. Since then, it has been on the list of quilts I’d like to make. At the start of this year, I had plans to go to a big quilt show and started thinking about what kind of purchases I would make while there. The above-mentioned quilt came to mind and I pulled up the pattern listing to get an idea of what I would need to make it.
While admiring the listing picture of the finished quilt, my brain started sorting the pieces used to make it. The next thing I knew, I had pulled up my Silhouette software and started mapping out the construction of the quilt. It would have been so much quicker to just purchase the pattern; plus time = money, so it would have been much cheaper too, but my brain saw it as a puzzle to be solved and once it started putting it all together, I was committed to figuring out how to make this quilt.
While figuring out the quilt blocks needed, I realized that the two pieced blocks (the roof and the bottom of the house with the door) could be made using a 4 at a time and a 2 at a time method - meaning that I would end up with 4 of each roof and 2 of each of the pieces with doors. I don’t have a plan for the second quilt, as I only plan on putting one on my wall, but to me, it just made sense to cut out additional pieces of the rest of the fabric and utilize the extra quilt blocks to make two quilts. So, I present to you both uptown and downtown Rainbow Alley:
Back in 2022, I came across the perfect backing fabric and took a snapshot on my phone. After starting on these quilts, I headed back to that same quilt shop and lo and behold, they still had the fabric available!
I went into the creation of these quilts with a few basic rules (mostly to prevent them from becoming too chaotic).
- I could only use super busy fabrics for the actual houses (none on the roofs or doors).
- I would mostly use blender fabrics (fabrics that have a print, but are typically subtle enough to read as a solid) for the doors and roofs.
- I wouldn’t use any fabric or trims more than once.
The prep stage took quite a bit of time (more than 10 hours). I went through nearly all my fabric to find patterns/colors that would work well together.
(I used my phone to help keep everything organized and created folders for roofs and doors. I took a pic of each roof/door fabric alongside the house fabric that it would be going with and added it to either the roof or door folder.) Then I cut all the pieces down to size and finally, finally got to sewing!
Once the houses had been created, it was time to add the trim. I had originally wondered how I was going to end up with enough bits for trim (I wanted a unique trim for each house, but I only needed a few inches and definitely did not want to buy a full spool of ribbon/trim for the little bit I needed), but that kind of just worked itself out in a few ways. 1. I used trim that I already had on hand (a few bits of rick rack). 2. Shortly after I started this project, I happened to pass by an estate sale and decided to check it out. I was thrilled when I came across various rick racks and bias trims and happily bought them at a very decent price. 3. I picked up a pack of ribbon at the craft store. It had a variety of one yard ribbons and was perfect for my needs. I attached most of the trims using ‘invisible’ thread.
Closeups of some of the trims:
I hand quilted the quilts with some variegated embroidery floss and with the aid of some Big Stitch Tiger Tape that I picked up a few years back. I am not a hand stitcher, so I really appreciated the tape helping me get nice, evenly spaced stitches!
Lastly, I created some labels with the help of Thread Astaire (my embroidery machine). I was really happy to find this rainbow house design, especially since the shape worked so well for the labels!
I had planned on adding rhinestone ‘door knobs’ to each of the doors, but when I laid out the rhinestones, I felt like their shine distracted from the rest of the design, so I just left the doors as is.
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