Creating a Wonky House Quilt Block

Hey, Cauldron Crafters!

Remember my Haunted House Quilt? I've had a few questions on how to create a wonky house block, so I've taken a few photos of an extra block that was made into a pillow for y'all. Remember, I loosely followed the instructions from UnRuly Quilting, but I've wonked my block a bit more, so I'll show you how to add the little characters and so on.

First, we're going to need scraps. Fussy cut yourself some characters if you'd like them to appear in your door and window - I've used both Riley Blake's Boo to You Scatter print and the purple print below, found at Joann Fabrics:

You'll also need various other cuts of fabric - nothing more than a fat quarter - and a bit of background fabric. For my 12.5" blocks for the quilt, I used about 8-10" WOF of background fabric.

This block creates a TON of waste, so you really have to commit to the look and prepare yourself for exactly how much fabric goes into one little block. 

We're going to take our fussy cut little characters and add some frames around them. To do this, I usually use scraps from other projects, but if you're cutting from a fat quarter, cut your strips to be at least 1.5" wide each to start. You'll lose a half inch in each seam allowance.

Add the frames around each side of the character square as shown. If you're choosing to have the open-door look shown, make sure your door piece is to one side, and it is at least as wide as the character cut:

Square up as shown.. you can choose to make this part a little more wonky by cutting at angles. Mine are slightly wonky:

Now, we need some house around these guys! Cut yourself some strips of your house fabric, and add one strip to each of the sides of your little guys. Cut another strip to add some distance between them. What, you want measurements? Ha. What are those?! Just kidding. I cut my middle strip to be about 14" on this one, because my block needed to be 21" square for my giant pillows. It's okay if your strips are a little longer or shorter than each other - just so long as they're tall enough to meet the height of our fun guys!

Trim up any funky edges- you want your strips to all be even. They can be "uneven", in the manner that they'll be wonky, but you want the edges of the orange and the door/window to match up with each other. Make sense?

Now stitch your three sections together to form your house, and trim as desired:

Now, we're going to add pieces of our background fabric to each side of the house. Size, again, is dependant on your project and how big you want your block to be. Make sure you've got an extra few inches in width - you're going to wind up trimming things down and you don't want it to be too skinny!

To add your roof, cut a rough triangle that is wider than your house by at least 2". You want it to overhang a little bit. We need to add the background fabric to this before we add it to the house - think of it as two separate blocks that you'll join together later on.

This part is where the most waste occurs for me. You need to create a large enough piece to make your block big enough, which means a long and wide piece. You'll be adding it to the slope of the roof like so:

If you choose to add a chimney, add it between two chunks of the black, before adding it to the roof triangle.

Using the other side of the roof as your guideline, trim the excess background fabric off so that you have an even edge to add the other half of the background fabric to. Stitch together, trim the bottom, and add to the house section as shown:

Now, you can stop here, or you can add spooky steps! To add spooky steps leading to the door, cut 1.5" strips out of a print and 1.5" strips out of the background fabric. Join together on the short end, and stagger their placement, stitching to the bottom of the block one at a time:

And MAGIC! We have a wonky house block. You can choose to make this more wonky if you so desire - the wonkiness is entirely up to you. Keep in mind that the sharper the angles, the more waste you'll have.

Lather, rinse, and repeat as many times as you want to make a quilt top, or quilt as is and create a Wonky Haunted House Pillow Cover!

Don't forget to link up any projects you've created over at Fabric Donkey for a chance to win the Riley Blake Trick or Treat Fat Quarter Bundle and add them to the Flickr Group!

Oh, finally, a little wonk!