Saturday, January 31, 2026

A Quilter's Cove QAL Link-up and SAHRR

Hi and welcome to the first month of the Quilter's Cove QAL. Kat is organising it but I volunteered to host the party since I have the service. Who doesn't like a party when there's no cleaning up after company leaves? 😁 Let's get on with it.

Quilter's Cove QAL

Last November, Cathy at CRAZY BY DESIGN and Kat at Scrapbox Quilts decided to organise a QAL - it's very simple. We follow the colours of the month as decided by Angela of SOSCRAPPY of the Rainbow Scraps Challenge (RSC) and we make a house block in that colour. I volunteered to host the party at the end of each month - so below you will find our first linking party.

January's Blue house

When I saw Kat's blue house, I wanted my roof to be scrappy too! The block is pieced except for the appliquéd windows and doors. I was totally winging it and I'm happy with my roof for which I used the flip and stitch technique 😍

I have no idea what I'm doing yet, but I am considering making it an attic window quilt. I've always wanted to try that and it mean that I don't necessarily need to have a cohesive neighbourhood. Anyway, we'll see as we go along. What I do know is that I'm not making 12 identical blocks - you would loose me after the second month!

Blue house block - 7½" x 10"

To link up to A Quilter's Cove QAL, please go to the bottom of the post. 😊

SAHRR Round 2 - Make it a double!

This week's SAHRR round 2 is hosted by Kathleen McMusing. She picked the theme, "Make it a double" and gave us many options and links to find double blocks. Frankly I was tired and they all looked difficult.😕 While I was looking I had a though....yup - it happens! What if I made up my own simple block? Here it is: Double Arrow.

Alternate Double Arrow Block

If it looks familiar, it's probably because you saw the grown up version in Round 1 in Kathleen's post.

Kathleen's Chain and Hour-Glass block from Round 1

I chose three fabrics and went back to the hour-glass tutorial. Using different fabric for only the arrows, they get accentuated. I did a quick sketch and it looked like it would work...and it did!

Sketching a possible double arrow block

It turns out that there are a few double arrow blocks, so I'm calling it the "alternate double arrow block". Here it is with the others.

Blocks are adding up

I accidentally made extra hour-glass blocks, so I made a couple more and put them together as another block. I thought that this might constitute a double hour-glass block, but it's not at all the same, so it's just four hour-glass blocks together.

Centre, hour-glass, and double arrow blocks

What I learned

I love playing with scraps and it's really the scraps that helped design the house. I love my scrappy roof - thank Kat for the idea!
I suspect that it may be difficult to make all of the house blocks the same size. I figure that if I make at least a few in the same size, that I can place them in a row.
I am going to look into an attic window quilt - that could be really fun and different for me.
I'm hoping to make each house if a different style. Of course I want to keep in scrappy, small, playful and experimental....and simple!
I certainly kept those goals in mind when I made the round 2 block for SAHRR. It was pretty experimental and it came out well. Of course it's a lot bigger than the other blocks, so I'll have to consider that. Worse comes to worse, I'll just make another one using smaller blocks.
I can always add the extra, large blocks on the back of the quilt!

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Saturday, January 31, 2026

A Quilter's Cove QAL Link-up and SAHRR

Quilter's Cove QAL

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First Quilt-Along