Cherry Home, a Crooked Fence, and a Lesson in Trusting My Gut..

Hi quilty friends!

I’m finally deep into Lori Holt’s Hometown Applique quilt, and I have two blocks done! If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve just started this project a few weeks back and I am happy to say, I have cut all the little pieces, but I’m fusing them with HeatBond and finishing everything off with a machine blanket stitch a few blocks at a time. 

And of course… it wouldn’t be a proper lesson without a mistake or two along the way. 😅

Getting Started: Cutting and Prepping

>As I mentioned in my previous post HERE>, my plan was to cut all the pieces ready to go for the next step. I have organized all my pieces on the portable design boards. I say this all the time, but I really love these design boards, and you can easily make them yourself. I take about them HERE>

I need to make some time to make MORE of the design board cause they’re so useful and can save lots of space too. 

After I’m done with all the pieces, I decided to put my second block together. This is when I take the pieces I cut for the block (in this case the Cherry House) and I bring it to the ironing board to fuse on the HeatBond Lite Appliqué Paper on the back and draw the appliqué shapes.

I figured working to complete only two blocks at once, getting all the pieces cut and fused so I could hop between them on the machine. My thinking was simple: applique by colour. That way I only have to change thread once per colour, instead of constantly swapping back and forth between blocks. Working on two-at-a-time rather all at the same time, to keep me motivated by having a complete block in a shorter round. 

It felt like such a smart system… right up until it wasn’t. More on that below!

I Finally Started the Home Town Quilt (And Here’s What Happened)

There’s a quilt kit that has been sitting on my shelf since 2024. Every time I walked past it, I’d give it a little smile — a quiet, slightly guilty smile — and keep walking. You know exactly what I mean, don’t you? 😛

Well, friends. It has finally happened. I have officially started Lori Holt’s Home Town Quilt, and I have so much to share with you.

The Kit That Started It All

I first fell in love with Lori Holt’s whimsical, story-filled quilts the way most of us do — one Instagram scroll at a time. The houses, the gardens, the tiny little details in every block. I was completely mesmerized, and in 2024 I finally took the plunge and purchased the Home Town Quilt Kit from Fat Quarter Shop. The kit is no longer available, but FQS carries lots of fun quilt kit which you can check out HERE>

The kit comes with the gorgeous bundle of Riley Blake fabrics, called Hometown designed by Lori Holt. Along with the fabrics, you also get the Home Town Sew Along Guide and the Sew Simple Shapes: Home Town template set— 63 acrylic templates designed specifically for the blocks in this quilt.

And then it sat there. For months.

Read on… 

I’ve made some good progress on the Dresden Bee quilt lately! This week, I managed to cut all the background pieces for the Dresden blocks, and I finally made a firm decision on the layout—always a big milestone. I’ve also figured out how I want to piece the giant Dresden block together with the scrappy patchwork border panels I’ve been working on.

Right now, I have five completed panels, each framed with a scrappy border. But here’s the twist: those patchwork panels ended up feeling so small next to the 24″ Dresden block, which truly lives up to its “giant” title! The scale difference really challenged my layout plan.

In fact, I originally cut the border strips for those panel pieces a little too narrow. Once I laid everything out, it just didn’t feel balanced next to the large Dresden. So I decided to go back and recut the borders, this time making them wider to better anchor the design. It was a little extra effort, but totally worth it!

I’ve been having so much fun working on a giant Dresden bee quilt using a bee collection called Honey & Lavender by Deb Strain for Moda Fabrics. I first tried out the Dresden Plate Template for 10″ Squares from Missouri Star Quilt Company when I made my quilt project organizer bag which I talked about before HERE>, and I completely fell in love with it. I knew right then that I had to make a full-sized quilt using these oversized Dresdens.

Fabric link:

Fabric: Honey & Lavender still available HERE> and at Missouri Star Quilt Company at the time of me writing this. However, if they’re no longer available, check out this page HERE for all the bees fabric to make your own bee quilt.