Village Houses: Joybells Ring in Heaven’s Street

When I was at our sewing group, Lisa brought out her “house” quilt, the earliest group quilt that we’d attempted together. You saw hers. Here’s mine:

Quilt #28

We had the common fabrics to use of the fairy print (on navy) and the pink striped (shown in some of the houses).

And here we are: Tracy, Lisa, Susan (who has moved away) and me, all holding up our quilt squares. I love how they are all laid around the sofa everywhere. And I love seeing that houses quilt in the background (#14 on my 100 quilts list, made 10 years earlier in 1988).

Detail. I wanted it to have bits and pieces of a neighborhood so I included those things in each deep border above and below the houses. I guess at the time it had significance, as I notice some World Wide Web fabric there (the earth globe above). The internet was just getting popular then — seems like a millenium ago.

This one’s my house. I guess my fairy was tired and lay down on the front walkway.

I entered into Road to California in 2000; here’s what I wrote on the entry form:

As I was designing all the houses, I tried to include a wide variety of styles, to illustrate the diversity of a street in Heaven, a celestial neighborhood that would be knit together in love and faith. In the upper and lower borders, I placed activities that the people in the houses might do: getting together with friends, outdoor activities, celebrating holidays, and of course, quilting. The name of this quilt comes from an old saying that explains that when a child is given a home, “Joy-bells ring in Heaven’s street.”

You know those things you buy at quilt shows, like the panel above. Whenever are you going to use them, if not for backs?

Okay, here’s a few of the houses. The links underneath each illustration are templates for each house. They are PDF download files, but I’d ask you to remember that since I was a novice at this software at that time, they aren’t perfect. Some have a lot of pieces, others are more streamlined. A mix is best, if you’re making a village.