{"id":1503,"date":"2012-04-13T12:08:27","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T17:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1503"},"modified":"2025-11-08T08:40:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T13:40:02","slug":"block-exchange-extraordinaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1503","title":{"rendered":"Block Exchange Extraordinaire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

House block exchange, 2000<\/p><\/div>\n

In my early quiltmaking days, 1988-1994, \u00a0I belonged to a quilting bee in Denver, CO, where\u00a0I was\u00a0living at the time.\u00a0 The day I joined the group, they made the\u00a0decision\u00a0to go ahead with a\u00a0house block exchange someone had suggested.\u00a0 With 10 in the group, the idea was to choose a building\u00a0 block and\u00a0make 10 blocks the same, one for each member, including\u00a0ourselves.\u00a0 The only stipulation was the 12″ height limit – the width could be anything.\u00a0\u00a0We set\u00a0a date set three months ahead, the first week in january, \u00a0on which all blocks were to be finished and\u00a0brought along\u00a0to exchange.\u00a0 Those three months included the busy Christmas\/NY season, plus we continued on with the normal monthly block exchange for members in their turn on that list\u00a0– so by the time we gathered for the exchange day we were all pretty\u00a0overwhelmed with what had \u00a0turned out to be a huge project; everyone took home their blocks, and nothing happened for a couple of years !\u00a0\u00a0Then one day Barb brought along hers, pieced\u00a0in a square village green arrangement.\u00a0 That prompted me to get mine out, and this is how I arranged them.\u00a0 The brown borders are a woodgrain fabric, and I made extra trees in the style of someone’s trees on their block, which helped pull it all together into a kind of streetscape.\u00a0 An odd mix of architecture styles though!\u00a0 I can still ‘see’ and ‘hear’ each of the girls whose blocks all express something about them and\u00a0their individuality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Which is mine?\u00a0 The caramel coloured New England style Saltbox with red door and chimney, second from the upper row\u00a0right end.\u00a0<\/em><\/span>\u00a0The green-roofed courthouse next to it was made by Janet Jo, a lawyer and quiltmaker who\u00a0 writes and lectures on legal issues for quilters, makes quilts and\u00a0dyes fabrics.\u00a0 On the other side of mine is a rural\u00a0log cabin\/ranch house\u00a0made be someone whose name escapes me, but who\u00a0I never met\u00a0because she \u00a0moved away and\u00a0I took her place in the group.\u00a0 There are three miniature\u00a0hand quilted ‘quilts’ hanging on the clothesline in front of her house. \u00a0Sandy’s, on the left end of the upper row also has an actual little quilt hanging on a line beside her house.\u00a0 Sherri’s house is apparently just like the one she grew up in. \u00a0 Mary Ann, a southern belle from Charleston SC\u00a0in the bible belt, \u00a0did the church.\u00a0 Barb, who as far as I remember did not have any rural background but had an interest in pioneer furniture and equipment, which probably included barns,\u00a0did\u00a0one for the heck of it.\u00a0 \u00a0Janet chose a mexican cantina because it was one of the group’s traditions to eat out regularly at a favourite one.\u00a0 Next to hers is Karen’s – either her childhood home or the first one she lived in as a bride – I don’t quite remember.\u00a0\u00a0Finally, lower right end, we come to Penny’s red\u00a0schoolhouse.\u00a0 I think her daughter was a teacher but its a traditional block, anyway.<\/p>\n

I think the really, really bright red she used\u00a0might have brought us all to a screeching halt worrying about how her block could\u00a0fit\u00a0in among all\u00a0the other\u00a0muted traditional north american colours that were still in vogue then and that everyone else used.\u00a0\u00a0 It was 1988, and bright colours were only just appearing<\/em>.\u00a0 Eventually I hit on the idea of overspraying the bright red with very\u00a0watery sandy coloured paint, which toned it down so it looks perfectly in place on the front.\u00a0 I think someone put Penny’s\u00a0on the back of hers, but that seemed\u00a0 sad to me. \u00a0Penny was\u00a0so warm and generous to everyone, and in particular she’d been\u00a0totally wonderful about\u00a0the very first\u00a0block\u00a0I did in the monthly exchange – which was for her that month.\u00a0\u00a0When we all produced them, mine\u00a0was the only totally different one – I’d misunderstood what ‘baskets in blue’ really meant, being a naive new quilter and foreign to boot.\u00a0 “Baskets in blue” was what she asked for.\u00a0 I had very little idea about all this traditional block stuff I was so newly in contact with.\u00a0 But\u00a0 I understood the basket pieces of the pattern were\u00a0to be one\u00a0blue.\u00a0 So I chose a nice darkish blue print for that part.\u00a0 But I didn’t realise everyone would do the other part of the patern in calico\/quilters muslin as tradition dictated, so\u00a0I naively\u00a0selected another blue, the palest, tiny weeny little blue\u00a0print for the background, very pretty.\u00a0 I\u00a0felt pleased with\u00a0the fabrics I\u00a0found\u00a0for ‘baskets in blues’.\u00a0 Plus, as a real newbie wanting to produce something of\u00a0good enough\u00a0standard, it took me several goes over the month to get it to come out to the exact measurement she asked for.\u00a0\u00a0 So you can imagine my mortification when the blocks were all handed in and mine was the only one with a pale blue background – all the others were cream!\u00a0 Immediately I offered to\u00a0make another.\u00a0\u00a0Penny had no idea how generous this offer really<\/em> was, neither did anyone else then, although\u00a0I told them a year or two later.\u00a0\u00a0However, Penny, bless her, insisted\u00a0it would go right in the middle of the front, and so it did.\u00a0\u00a0 So, when it came to her bright red schoolhouse block, I knew I simply had to find a way to place it on the front without it totally overwhelming everything around it…a couple of others took my lead and were able to finish their house quilts, too.<\/p>\n

Apology -I took the phoot when I was back in our house in Perth\u00a0a few years ago, and because it is not possible to stand directly in front of the quilt without rigging up a scaffolding above the staircase and walking out onto it, it’s rather lopsided.\u00a0 But\u00a0I assure you\u00a0the quilt\u00a0is perfectly rectangular<\/span>.<\/em><\/span>\u00a0And its a\u00a0marvellous keepsake of that group.\u00a0 They were a pretty dynamic lot and I still keep in touch with a couple of them, and although the group continues the membership has changed a lot, perhaps by\u00a0100% now, I’m not sure. It’s been a while.\u00a0 I think in all our moves, so far\u00a0they are the group I found hardest to leave behind…. so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my early quiltmaking days, 1988-1994, \u00a0I belonged to a quilting bee in Denver, CO, where\u00a0I was\u00a0living at the time.\u00a0 The day I joined the group, they made the\u00a0decision\u00a0to go ahead with a\u00a0house block exchange someone had suggested.\u00a0 With 10 in the group, the idea was to choose a building\u00a0 block and\u00a0make 10 blocks the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-of","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10072,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions\/10072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}