Rainbow Neighbourhood House Block #9 and Some Hearts

My sincere apologies for being a day late with this post; life has been rather busy and full lately, all good, but I don't work well when I have a lot of interruptions throughout the day even if they are good ones like reading (such a good, captivating book I'm in), Netflix, eating outside, gardening, errands... Anyhow, let's go!

This week we are making our ninth house! If you are doing the throw, this is your last block, and you get next week off.😚 If you are making the twin, you will have one more house to make along with the heart blocks.

I have the final two sponsors to introduce you to.

Quiltinator is the brand new  longarm business of Gale Bulkley, located in Hamilton, Ontario.

I got to know Gale through Instagram and my Popstar QAL. She does beautiful work, piecing some amazing and intricate quilts. Check out her Instagram feed for some inspiration - here's her latest piece!

Now that retirement from her day job is on the horizon, she made the leap and purchased a Gammill machine and has started taking in customer quilts. She is a new sponsor this year, and her prize is one amazing offering: she will quilt your Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt AND provide the batting. However, even if you choose to quilt your QAL quilt yourself, you can still win this prize because she will quilt another quilt of your choosing. Also please know that if you do not quilt your Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt top, and you DO win Gale's prize, it will count to win my prize of a free pattern and fat quarter. Hope that makes sense. You can contact Gale at hello (at) quiltinator (dot) ca

Another new sponsor this year is Kim Lapacek of kimlapacek.com aka Persimon Dreams.

You may recognize Kim from her many years (since 2010!) of hosting Project Quilting. I've participated in it since 2020, and wow, has it been a great boost and challenge for my creativity. Thousands of quilters around the world participate! One of my favourite designs of Kim's is Dresden Neighborhood - interesting - I'll let you make the several connections I just realized when I typed that sentence!

OMG, she did a rainbow neighbourhood in 2020!

Kim lives in Wisconsin on an apple orchard farm. She is a QAL lover and has hosted many over the years; from what I can determine, since 2012. I got up the courage to ask her if she'd consider being a sponsor for this one and she immediately said yes.💕 She is offering two winners their choice of PDF patterns from her Etsy shop.

Okay on to the homework for this week. There are eight houses of the rainbow in the pattern as I made it: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, and violet. You have choices for the ninth and tenth houses: if you did light green (or blue or purple), you could do a dark green (or blue or purple). In the pattern, and in my original throw, I did a neutrals house for my ninth house. 

I plan to do a similar one for my ninth house in the twin quilt. It might be a bit trickier, as I don't have a lot of creams and low volume batiks, but I like a good challenge. I will update this post once it is complete.

For the twin you also need to make two heart blocks. They are 8" finished blocks which get some background pieces around them. Here are my two:

Isn’t that hearts batik adorable? It’s from a few years ago, ‘Sweet Hearts’.🩷

Here is a pressing tip, not included in the pattern, to get those hard blocks to lie nice and flat.

When you make the HSTs for the bottom quarters of the heart, press the seams of one HST to the pink and the other set of seams to the background. When you press the stitch-and-flip squares to the top two corners of the top quarters of the heart, press all of them to the background except for the one on the inside of the left quarter as shown above. Press it to the pink. Press the centre seams of the top half of the heart towards that one pressed-to-the-pink seam, and press the HSTs centre seam towards the right. This ensures that the centre seams will now nest and lie flat. I pressed my final horizontal seam up as you can see which makes for nice flat outside point intersections as well as a nice and flat centre. 

When you lay out the four quarters to make the heart, be sure to have the HST seams pressed to the pink beneath the top quarter that was pressed to the pink. 

So, next week we make House #10, which will be a Christmas-themed house for my twin quilt. We will talk about layout then too. For you throw-making peeps, enjoy finished your nine blocks, along with a week off. 

In case you've forgotten or not noted it, the finished flimsy is due June 15. This has been the final parade date for several years now, but since this quilt is a little more involved, especially the twin, I am going to allow two weeks after that to get your quilt tops quilted for the final parade on June 30. More on those details next week. I have a DrEAMi happening today - someone has ordered a forest green makeup bag and although it said 'in stock' in my Etsy shop, in fact, it is not. The stock person forgot to note that it had been sold. Better have a talk with that girl... (me😝) so I have some serious sewing to get done!