A little house quilt block roof problem
 

Hi, I am new to the board and a new quilter. I started about a year ago and am currently working on a very low stakes scrap busting quilt using this tutorial (https://sewsassybypaula.net/2018/07/...lock-tutorial/) to make little house quilt blocks. My problem is the instructions for attaching the roof pieces is very imprecise and it turns out different every time I do it. I’m not concerned with it being perfect because this is largely for practice, but does anyone know of a method that will help me attach the roof triangles without having to start over every time and just guess?! Thanks!!

I would not use her directions for the roof section and instead use this method to make flying geese:
https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/flyi...ptions-2821434 There is a link to the tutorial on how to make them but this site gives the sizes you need to cut the fabric. Because the flying geese are twice as wide as tall, you may have to sew another rectangular section above the door, if you don't want the roof to end equal to the height of the door. But with this method there is no waste, and you get four identical roofs at once.
Hope this helps.

Thank you! I love how the little houses look so I’m sure I will be making another one of these and I will do the flying geese instead! Thanks for the tip, it makes much more sense! Unfortunately I have already done all my cutting so I need to figure out a way to use what I have

After looking at that tutorial; here's what I would do...

Fold the house block in half to make a crease down the middle,
then open it up and place right side up.
Then place the triangles right side down and overlap them by 1/8th to 1/4 inch....
so there are two little points up on top. Center these points on the crease, then center the bottom
overlapped pieces on the crease as well. Meaning center the crease in the middle of the overlapped pieces shadow.
That will make it straight, if you need to, pull the point section down to make sure it's centered, then slide it up carefully. Note the distance the points are above the house block and make that the same measurement on all your blocks. Good luck, let me know if that works!

I love house blocks! Welcome to the board!

Another possibility would be to draw it up as a paper pieced pattern,
and let that technique's precision, build you perfect houses!! :)

Good Luck ... and Welcome!

Welcome to the board!

I just spent over an hour fiddling with that - and have decided that if the squares were cut at 5.25 inches instead of 5 inches, that it would work out much better.

If using 5.25 inch squares - I drew a line about 1-3/16 inch from the bottom of the rectangle and lined up the edge of the triangle with that and had the ears/tails sticking out about 3/8 inch on the straight edge of the triangle.

I don't know what to tell you about making 5 inch squares work - perhaps cut all the other pieces down a little bit - instead of a 9 x 6 rectangle, make it 9 x 5-3/4?

And then take off 1/8 inch on the two pieces that flank the door?

I do not know if those suggestions will work - I have not tried them out.

I do know that using a 5.25 inch square worked much better than a 5.0 inch square.

Also - if you press the seams of the "roof" towards the roof - it will make the house stand out and the background recede.

Thank you all for the replies!! I’ve been experimenting too and I think I’m getting there (I agree that slightly larger square for the roof would give more wiggle room), each one is slightly better than the last but still not perfect. Lots of my houses will be without nice points on the roof once the top is pieced together. Can I pretend it’s a “wonky house quilt”? Haha. I will probably have to offset the rows somehow to avoid having to match seams since I think all my houses are slightly different sizes. It’s all just a big excitement at this point! Good thing my kids don’t look too closely

Some people put "streets" between the rows of houses and "trees" between the houses.

Hey, some houses are really wonky anyway! so why not?