Christmas quilt top finished and house blocks

When I was cleaning the basement a few weeks ago, I found some 9 patch quilt blocks that I made, years ago.  I'm thinking they were made in the late 90's... so about 20 years ago.  Anyhow, I didn't think to take a picture of the blocks alone.

I only had 24 of the blocks, and they were made with 3" squares, so it wasn't going to make a very big quilt.  So, I decided to make some hourglass blocks to use with them.  I had the red plaid on hand, it came from some old stuff that I got when a friend of mine was cleaning out her parents' house.  There was just enough of it.  The off-whites were from my stash too, I used about 4 different ones that I had.  

If you look closely, there are some really old ones in here.  I remember making Christmas stockings for my boys out of some of this fabric.... so that puts it over 30 years old.  And there are some non-Christmas ones as well, I don't know if you can see it in the photo above, but that block in the center, the burgundy colored square has chickens on it.  It truly was a "use what you have" at the time.

The color looks different outside today!  Now to find backing. I'm sure I've got something in my stash, and then I'll need to get it quilted.  I thought very briefly about hand quilting it.  But I don't know when I would get it done.  So off to the long armer it will go.

We are making little house blocks in our block exchange group in the quilt guild I belong to.  There are 12 of us in the exchange.  We each need to make 12 blocks of 2 different houses, so 24 in all.  Here are mine -- they really did go together quickly and were fun to make!

We were instructed to make them in "happy" colors, and we were not to use black or gray.  I can't remember what was said about brown, but I really wanted to use the brown bias plaid for the chimney on the first block, so I did.   Hopefully I didn't break any rules!

I hope you all have a good week, and Happy Thanksgiving!!