Hillside Houses

I recently came across the Hillside Houses pattern by Christina Tepsick who blogs over at Pretty Little Quilts.

Christina offered the patterns for free as part of a weekly quilt-along that she organized earlier this year.  I missed out on the quilt-along, but the patterns are still available, so I am going to work on this solo.  Christina wrote the pattern with 3 different size options: a bed size, a wallhanging and a mini.  I'm going to do the wallhanging.

I don't have a stash of solid fabrics like the ones shown in the pattern, but I do have quite a collection of batiks, so I'm going to make mine using those.  Only problem is that for each medium to dark batik, you need a lighter one to pair with it.  I don't have much for light batiks, but I did have a gift certificate to Keepsake Quilts burning a hole in my pocket so I purchased a selection of light colored batiks:

I immediately started pairing up lights and darks and set them out on the spare bed.

For a couple of days, every time I walked by I would go in and rearrange things to make new combinations.

Finally, I decided on the final pairings, and made up a little fabric swatch card for each set so that I would remember who went with who.

Then the real fun began, deciding which set of fabrics to use on each house.  Christina's instructions included a coloring page to help sort it all out.  I always love a good session with some colored pencils.  Over the years, as the kids got boxes of new colored pencils, the old ones were given to Mom.  I've collected a nice assortment from their castoffs;

Soon, an arrangement of swatches that looked like this:

were translated in a coloring that looks like this:

I am going to use the same fabric for all of the roof pieces.  It's a dark teal and purple batik with designs that reminded me of shingles.

Now that I have the blueprint, this architect is ready to start building!