Home is Where Your Story Begins

Home is Where Your Story Begins
16" x 16"

My dear friend, Jamie Fingal, has a new fabric line coming out with Hoffman Fabrics this fall at the Houston Quilt Market.  I have LOVED her style and her art for years!  I eagerly said "YES" to the request to make a small quilt with her new fabrics.  Within a few days a package arrived on my doorstep.  Inside, a really fun collection!  I pinned all the fabrics on my design wall and let my imagination run wild.  I quickly came up with about 4 different ideas, and threw caution to the wind and picked one idea to start with.

I LOVE the way the fabric FEELS!  It is printed on a fabulous light yet densely woven cotton that is soft and perfectly suited for fusible (or piecing!). So with my bolt of Mistyfuse in hand, fat Goddess sheets, and iron, I set to work.  This would be my background...

 I fused a section of blue, and another of green to the red dyed batting (that part was from my stash).  Then I cut out the words and fused them on as well.  Later, I fused some fabric on for the backing.

Next, I fused blocks of different colors along with the black and white roof sections to another piece of red dyed batting.  In this photo, I am machine quilting the sections.

With small and sharp scissors, I cut out the windows in these machine quilted units.

I will later trim away all the red batting from around the buildings, but first, I add some hand stitching around the cut out windows.  I love playing with the colored embroidery floss to really set off each window.

The next part is assembling the "picture" from the idea I have in my head.  I fussy cut some little pieces to go inside the window cut-outs,  like:  the art palette and brushes, a zipper, some scissors, a spool of thread, a button, and a cup of coffee!  These are really cute and really fun!  I also cut some  large scale flowers for the sides.  And, now that the window pieces are lined up properly, I remove the quilting buildings, and fuse the background pieces on.  Then the background is ready for machine quilting.

Nearly finished, the building units are pinned in place, and then satin stitched with bright colors around each section.  I also added some black and white details to the leaves, and put the little Guatemalan dolls in the windows too!  I also added little white painted dots around the top. The last step was trimming the quilt to the 16" square which left just a scant edge of red showing.  Perfecto!