Converting House Blocks to Quilt-As-You-Go and I Quilted This!

Hello and welcome 😎 With the hot and muggy summer here, I'm mostly estivating, except when it's cool enough to have my first coffee outside. I'd rather spend some quality time in my studio than wilt in the garden. I can take the heat, sort of, if it's not too muggy out so we'll see where I end up spending my summer!

Quilt-As-You-Go (QAYG) House Blocks

I was planning on doing this after I finish FMQ my Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt but I just couldn't help it. For my Quilter's Cove QAL, I bought a few brown fabrics for the window sills and really wanted to see what it would look like in an Attic Window setting. Here they all are.

Six houses now as attic window blocks

Attic Window

If you're not familiar with the attic window block, here's what's happening. To create the attic window, I have added the inside of what looks like a window sill to the house block. That's the dark vertical brown, and then the light brown strip at the bottom. Doesn't that look like you're looking at the house through a window? The light pink/gray fabric on the side and on top are the sashing that separate the windows and add contrast.

Attic Window added to the orange house block

Because of my total lack of planning, you can see that the window ledge is cutting up the roof of the orange house. I measured all of my blocks and decided that they would each be  9" x 10½". That means that the orange, pastel and pink blocks were trimmed while I had to add an extra strip to the red, blue and green blocks. Here's what I did.

For the red house I needed to add ¾" to the width of the block. I wanted to keep it simple so I found hand-dyed scraps for the sky and the lawn. Not perfect but really good enough once the attic window and sashing are added.

Adding fabric to the side of the block

Trimming the extra fabric on the block

Here is the finished block.

The added strip doesn't show much on the red house block

Here's what my first house, the blue one, looked like when I originally made it. It was the smallest block of the batch.

My original blue house was much smaller

Here's what it looks like after adding a couple of inches to the width as well as embellishment.

Updated blue house as an attic window block

For the green Danish houses,  I needed to add ¾" to the width of the block. Here's what it originally looked like.

The green block was not quite wide enough

If you look carefully, you can see that the dark brown vertical sill is just a tad wider than the sill. 

Adding a ½" of dark brown to the green houses block

Quilt-As-You-Go

Now that the houses are in attic window blocks, the next part will be to quilt-as-you-go. It's exactly what it's called. I'll be adding batting and a backing to each attic window block and will quilt them separately. It's easier to quilt a smaller block than it is a full quilt. Once it's FMQ, you stitch the fronts together and then the backs. Probably not quite as simple as it sounds but it's not too difficult. Hopefully I will have considered everything while I converted the blocks to attic windows. I'll deal with it once all of the blocks have been quilted. That's a problem for future me 😁 

What I learned

• When I decided to put the houses in attic window blocks, I did a lot of research on how there were done. Finding free patterns on the internet helped a lot.
• Getting all of the blocks to be the same size was a challenge but I love that kind of problem solving! 😊
• I have no idea why I assumed that the window sills needed to be brown (when I looked at the window sills in our house, they're all white!) Anyway it worked out well.
• I'm really happy that I found the pink/gray fabric for the sashing in my stash. I think it's perfect. Since I now have lots of brown fabric, I might use one of these for the backing. I need to choose before I start the QAYG.
• I'll share the QAYG when I start it, probably in August since I now have to get back to my Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt.
• I like the way the additions to the two blocks, the red and the blue houses, came out. Adding extra fun elements to the blue house made it easier to hide the addition!

Related links

• Top 15 Free Attic Window Quilt Patterns at I 💗Quilting Forever

• 

  A Quilter's Cove QAL, main page on Kat's blog
• A Pastel House in Quilter's Cove QAL, June 27, 2026
• An Orange House in Quilter's Cove QAL, May 30, 2026
• A Pink House in Quilter's Cove QAL, April 27, 2026
• A Fun Red House for A Quilter's Cove QAL, March 28, 2026
• A Quilter's Cove QAL for February, February 28, 2026
• A Quilter's Cove QAL Link-up and SAHRR, January 31, 2026

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, including the latest Quilter's Cove QAL linking party. Why not check some of these out? Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Patchwork & Quilts, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2026, Monday Musings, 

I Quilted This!

Welcome to the I Quilted This! linking party that celebrates quilting on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. Feel free to link up and share any recent project, even if you're not quilting it! 

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button. 

Gwyned Trefethen is eagerly anticipating the return of her Bernina but meanwhile she made a wholecloth sampler of FMQ designs.

FMQ sampler by Gwyned

The writer of Based On A True Story blog finished her Carousel Quilt which she had first posted about in 2017! The quilt is really stunning although the border didn't cooperate. She finished it and it looks great - without the border! 

BTW, I haven't been able to leave a comment on your blog, so thanks for linking up!

A lovely Carousel Quilt finish

Melva finished a lovely ABC quilt. It looks wonderful, even if it wasn't in the colour way she was hoping for. Sometimes you have to go with the scraps you have! 

Melva's scrappy ABC quilt

It's now your turn!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter