Painted ladies uphill and down

Once the Christmas sewing was over, I had a list of quilts on my to-do list, and a wall hanging of little houses was not even on my radar.  However...

I have always loved house quilts, so when I saw this pattern, "Fierce Ladies"  by Eye Candy Quilts,  I just had to purchase it.

I started pulling fabrics almost as soon as I got home, but which fabrics to choose?  I have a drawer where I toss any fabrics that look like they might have been designed by Bonnie and Camille of Thimbleblossoms.  I love their cheerful color palette, and this house pattern seemed the right place to use them.

Having decided on the fabrics, I starting putting together combinations for building houses.

The piecing went fairly quickly and I soon had about a dozen houses ready to rise up my little  hill:

I was loving the color combinations, but something about the quilt just didn't set right with me.  Maybe it's because I am left handed, but I just felt that the houses should start at the top left and go down the hill instead of starting at the bottom and going up.   My husband voted to keep the houses as they were, but it just kept nagging at me to change them.

After much thought, I remade the door units to go in the other direction, and soon I had my little rows of houses going down the hill rather than up.

This orientation just seemed to settle more naturally for me, and I decided to go with it and finish the rest of the houses:

Before sewing the units together, I added some rick rack trim to the roof lines:

Adding the rick rack was as easy as just sewing a piece of rick rack to the top of the house block before adding the peaked roof unit.

The finished quilt top looks like this:

I may be teaching this pattern sometime soon at a guild workshop.  I will be sure to provide the directions for both uphill and downhill houses and let the quiltmaker decide.

Legally binding

One of the best motivations for me to get a quilt to the finish line is to enter it into my quilt guild's annual show.   I spent a good number of evenings over the past month or so hand sewing the bindings on some quilts that have been patiently waiting for a while.

The first one I finished was my Michigan quilt, which I previously blogged about here and here.

I had this quilt professionally longarmed about 2 years ago, by a local quilter named Laurena who used to quilt for many of the members of our guild before she retired.  Coincidentally,  Laurena happened to come to our show  and she was pleased to see that some of her handiwork was still on display when she saw this quilt hanging there.

Another quilt I finished for the show was my La Vie En Rose quilt which I blogged about here.

 I didn't get a good photo of it hanging in the show, but trust me, it was finished.

It's kind of embarrassing that both Michigan and La Vie En Rose both date back to 2013!  (Sometimes having a blog can expose truths that you just don't want to admit. 😏 )

A third quilt that I finally finished was this one from 2018, which I blogged about here.

I had three other quilts that needed binding to get them ready for the show, but at least they were created in 2019.   The first of the three was  Fierce Ladies,   

The second was my guild's Block of the Month, the  Half Square Triangle Sampler

And the third was a quilt I created for my guild's member's challenge which will get it's own blog post in the near future.

Six quilts may sound like a lot, but these are all fairly small. On the other hand, that was 24 corners of binding that needed to be coached into submission. 

Feels good to get them finished.  Thank goodness for quilt shows! 😁