Houses Under Construction!

Thanks so much to all the great visitors and the wonderful feedback! And many thanks to Lee's anniversary WIP Wednesday, which livened up the Shortcookiehouse!

I went back to the drawing board today with the houses for my tablerunner swap. I had originally done one house, which I really liked, but thanks to great feedback on my blog last night (thanks to all the links from Lee's great WIP Wednesday link-up!), I've decided to frame all the houses and trees just in white and then use colored perle cotton thread to hand quilt around each of the trees and houses. So, having trees I already really like (and which are already happily framed in their Kona snow), I went back to my pile of extra designs for pieced houses (I had many more designed than I needed), and then got crack-a-lackin' today on piecing it. Here's what I've come up with:

I had just gotten the pez fabric in the mail this week and was so psyched to be able to incorporate it into this. I'm also pretty happy with my fussy cut of the heron/stork on the roof which I'll now applique on. I think this house is in much better keeping with my trees (pictured poorly in yesterday's post!). I've gotten started on my second house, which is in red tones, but incorporates the blue tufted tweets chairs for windows (with a bird peeking out of one), and the pez fabric as a door. Who knew?! I think I've actually fallen in love with paper piecing!


A bit dispirited by all my dark photos, I actually braved the outdoors today (I know, it was, in fact a beautiful, sunny crisp day today in Utah!) and took some photos of my works in progress that don't make them look quite so milktoasty. What a difference! I know, I'm not quite an Ansel Adams yet (can you picture him dragging quilt blocks around the great American southwest??!).



I know I showed these yesterday, but the pictures were so awful, I had to show them again in proper light so that they actually look like trees! I guess natural sunlight actually makes a difference!

So, tomorrow, I'm back to finish my red house, and then I have just one house left to piece before I can pull the top together . . . which is a good thing, because I have still have quilting and binding ahead of me before I need to send it off in two weeks to ______ (my secret partner's secret destination in a perhaps far-off land!)!