Building My Neighborhood

 A little bit about how I put this mini together today.  I'm never sure what I should write about on reveal day, and what I should save for the 'behind the scenes' post.  But anyway.

 I started with a fairly large pile of fabric, all colors that I thought would pop against the green I had chosen for a background.  This pile above represents the 30 actual fabrics that I used on the quilt.  Each piece of each house, tree, etc., is a different fabric.

 As I mentioned yesterday, this is roughly based on an aerial view of our little town that we vacation in.  Once I got the road mapped out, I started free form cutting house shapes.  I would rough cut a piece of Wonder Under, Pellon 805, fuse it to the fabric and cut out my shape.

 This is after I had the houses where I wanted them and fused them down.

 Then I added in some greenery, a fence, and the train track.  I was excited to start the embroidery, so I forgot to take a picture until after I had started.

 I did the embroidery through the batting, for texture, but not through the backing.  I learned this from Laura Wasilowski.  Actually, this whole quilt is really inspired by her bright style, fused pieces and hand embroidery.

I've only done a couple of cross stitch projects in my life, but I inherited all my mother's floss, so I have a great selection of colors. 

Here's what my embroidery looks like from the back.  Not so lovely, so I like that its hidden by the backing.

 If I wanted to be true to the cardinal directions, I would hang my quilt like this, however, I think it actually looks better with the train track weighting it at the bottom.

 French knots!  I'm still pretty excited about figuring them out!

 In case you missed it, check out the initial reveal post for this quilt and also all the other quilts that were made by our little group!

Our next theme is Urban: Structures  I've got two ideas brewing already!