house quilts in the house

houses on quilts - it's a thing!

Our friend Julie Silber recently curated an exhibition of house quilts at the Iowa Quilt Museum. The exhibition, open June 20th to September 10th, is called "Welcome Home. A Celebration of House Quilts." We saw photos of the exhibition on Facebook, and there was a familiar quilt on display.

house quilts now on display at the Iowa Quilt Museum

The wonderfully graphic schoolhouse friendship quilt from New York State (far right in exhibit photo) was once part of our collection. In fact, it was one of the first quilts in the collection. I'd forgotten all about it. The quilt was sold to a friend and fellow collector years ago, before my wife Linda and I met, so she never got to see it. The quilt has wonderful inked signatures and dates, some with locations noted. 

Seeing the exhibition photos reminded us, we have a few house quilts of our own. One is a traditional house block quilt from the 1970s, very boldly made with solid multicolor fabrics. Our nickname for the quilt is "Levittown, Pennsylvania - after the big paint sale." 

The house block is a standard way of presenting houses on quilts, but there are plenty of other ways. A velvet Victorian period crazy quilt top (above) has a little red house in a field of crazy patchwork. Another quilt from around the same time period is made with hexagon shaped patches with buildings, presumably houses. Fancy houses, with lots of windows, large doorways and chimneys!

Quiltmakers are very resourceful. If they want to put a house on a quilt, they'll find dozens of ways to do it. Believe it or not, I made a quilt with a house on it. It was a small quilt, made for the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show Small Wonders challenge. I made the quilt because my Mom was planning to visit, and I wanted to surprise her by having a quilt on display. 

The quilt was called "House of Wonky" and it was loosely architectural, made with batiks, and irregularly shaped. And yes, Mom was very surprised! Most surprising of all, it had a blue ribbon for Viewer's Choice and a "sold" sticker on it. It was one of the first and only quilts I ever made.

One of our absolute favorite house quilts is a 1930s pictorial quilt from Ohio. It came to the collection several years ago from our friend Shelly Zegart, and it is truly iconic. There are so many ways to include houses in quilts. We look forward to seeing more photos from the exhibition in Iowa, and hope lots of people will go see it. For more info (Iowa Quilt Museum) click here.