My Twilight Quilt: Charlie's House

Eventually we made it to Charlie’s. He still lived in the small, two-bedroom house that he’d bought with my mother in the early days of their marriage. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 8

I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 9

Here is Charlie's house with a little bit of the forest*. I started with two different paper piecing patterns for this section of the quilt. I used a house pattern from a book called 365 Foundation Quilt Blocks by Linda Causee as a beginning place for what I wanted my house to look like. The trees are based on a pattern by Patrice Trnka Adams. I used Microsoft Paint and Microsoft Word to digitally alter the patterns to fit in the spots I needed them. When one program wouldn't do what I needed, I'd switch to the other. I re-sized and re-drew, adding in and pulling out elements until I got the right size, shape and aesthetic that I wanted. My complete pattern is available for download in PDF format here.

Although I have two rows of forest* in my quilt already, I wanted more in this block because the house is surrounded by forest*. The forest is as much a character in the book as Bella and the Cullens. It plays a big role in the setting and so my feeling is that you can't have too many trees in this quilt. There will be more in other blocks. Just wait. Here are some fun details about this block . . . I opened Bella's window so that Edward could sneak in and out. And I'm thinking about adding two golden eyes to the taller of the two trees, if I can pull it off without it being too cheesy. And of course, I used Fairy Frost fabric; Fog for the windows.


I've been looking forward to doing this block for a long time. I've been collecting patterns and fabrics for months now and looking forward to having other projects finished so I can work on this quilt. My only problem now is deciding which block to do next. I think that the roof fabric worked out well as the roof. I'd originally planned to use it as the house, but it would have been too much. I think this light tan fabric is a great compromise between the white house in the movie and the unknown something that wasn't white that I wanted to do. I plan to stick to the book with the color for the Cullen's house (white) and didn't want to have two white houses in the quilt. I think this color has enough tan to it that the houses won't look too much the same. I'm going to ask the quilter stitch in horizontal lines across the house to look like siding and kind of camouflage the (necessary) seams (for creating the steps) at the bottom of the house.

Even though I'm now calling my quilt More Than A Little Obsessed, it is still a bit of a mystery quilt because I had no idea how this block was going to turn out when I started it . But I like the final result.


*Key: 1 Paper Pieced Tree = 500 Trees in the Forks Forest
1 Raw-Edge Appliqué Tree = 150 Trees in the Forks Forest