About Me

My photo
Australia
Wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, great-aunt and friend....and fur-kid mum I love Quilting, stitching, photography, cooking, baking, gardening, blogging and making new friends...stop by and say hi!

Saturday 19 April 2014

Building a House

What did you do this week? I built a house.......no really, I did! I even built it from the roof down. Oh, OK, I will explain myself.

It was a WIP week for me and while I was stitching away on The Avenue for my Edwardian House quilt I suddently got the urge to piece the finished blocks together. The Avenue is one of the border stitcheries and I have finished all the blocks that make up the house itself so I got them all out and began cutting them to size so I could sew them together in rows. For some reason, I started with the attic row which is how I ended up building my house from the roof down!
It didn't take long to measure, cut and sew the different levels together and before too long I had the makings of a house.
With the rows laid out, I started to sew them together.  I thought it best to do it this way to make sure the rows where the same length and the walls lined up with each level.  I wasn't too happy with the attic row but maybe I could fudge it in somehow.
I was really thrilled to get this part together but something just didn't look right. Not sure if you can notice in the above picture.  I made so certain that the walls lined up on each level and suddenly the drainpipe did not look right.  How can that be?  I followed the stitching plan exactly and it didn't look like that on the pattern picture.  I didn't know quite how to fix this problem and it was bothering me.  Need a closer look?
It just so happened that Miss M came over for a visit and, as usual, had a peek at what I had been sewing.  She spotted the dratted drainpipe straight away which bothered me even more . We were chatting about how odd it looked and where I could of possibly gone wrong......and then suddenly I had one of those "Duh" moments.  I had sewn two of the rows together incorrectly and so now I had to demolish part of my house.
 Since I had the demolition tool out, I also took the attic blocks apart and built them back together with a slightly narrower seam......aaaah, thats better. Carefully, I put the house back together and here it is with a border as well.........................so much happier now!
I cannot add anymore until I finish the stitched borders.  I chose not to buy the buttons as part of the BOM and the stitched borders have cornerstones that are just a piece of fabric with a button in the centre. I felt the quilt needed a little more if I was not using the buttons.  FNSI came along and I decided to spend it making my own cornerstones out of two of the fabrics bought for this project.
For the first time EVER, my calculations worked out perfectly and I made up 4 cornerstones that look something like this. With that done, I returned to The Avenue Stitchery and finished it so  it is also ready to add to the quilt.

I am linking up to FNSI over at Sugerlane Quilts










and BOMs Away at What a Hoot Quilts











31 comments:

  1. wow Cath you built a beautiful house, I love it! So glad I got to see it with Wendy's help :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is fabulous I just love it!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Cath,
    What a beautiful house you built. Looks fabulous after your renovations......
    Cheers
    Maria

    ReplyDelete
  4. Uma grande casa! Você é uma ótima construtora!
    As reformas ficaram ótimas .
    Parabéns!
    Um abraço!

    A great home! You are a great constructor!
    The reforms turned out great.
    Congratulations!
    Hugs!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, that is just beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  6. How beautiful is all that stitchery. I love it and can't wait to see this one completed.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh gosh Cath that is just lovely... what a lot of work... glad you worked out the drain pipe problem...

    Its really lovely...

    Hugz

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh My Goodness!!! What a lot of work! I'm glad to hear you worked out the problem with the drain pipe and I can't wait to see it when you add the cornerstones :) Barb.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It's so lovely..glad you sorted out the drain pipes - you couldn't live with that - you'd have water everywhere!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. SO MUCH embroidery. Wow. It's lovely

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wow, that is stunning! How long did it take you to do all that embroidery? How big is it? So jealous, wish it were on it's way to me LOL. xx debbie

    ReplyDelete
  12. Whoa! This is such a gorgeous and ambitious work! I love it, and I had to scroll up and down before I could figure out how you had corrected it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. The pinwheels are the perfect touch.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Cath,
    That is an awesome piece of work there, fab job!
    Love the pinwheels and the colour you've chosen.
    Cheers, Anita.

    ReplyDelete
  15. What a lot of work. Glad you found a fix for your problem it looks wonderful.

    ReplyDelete
  16. WOW Cath! Your house looks fantastic. Glad you got the drain pipe sorted out. Perhaps for the attic section you could stitch a few stitches to fill in the little gaps where the seams are. That way the stitching would be continuous. Just a thought. Hugs, Christine

    ReplyDelete
  17. Wow - what a stunning house you've built - and without the aid of scaffolding too!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Your embroidered house is beautiful! It was truly be a treasure once it's completed.

    ReplyDelete
  19. This is an amazing piece of embroidery! Quite beautiful! I particularly like the fence and flowers blocks. I can see how difficult I was to assemble the blocks. I would also have needed my seem ripper. Great work.

    ReplyDelete
  20. This is just lovely! Job well done...you should be very proud of yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Newbie Popping in from FNSI, Amazing work, Happy Easter

    ReplyDelete
  22. OMG that is gorgeous...beautiful & fantastic! I love it... and all those wonderful stitches you placed so perfectly... :)

    ReplyDelete
  23. Cath that is beautiful. What a gorgeous embroidery project. I am so glad you were able to fix the levels of the house. It would have been driving me batty too.

    Lovely, lovely, lovely.

    ReplyDelete
  24. That is a wonderful project. I would love to make this but after looking it up it's too expensive for me. It really beautiful though.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Oh, my! This is so cool! Thanks for sharing it at BOMs Away - I keep pouring back over it. :D Nice that all it needed was a row switching, and it's interesting how dramatic a difference that made even beyond the drainpipe match-up. Love your pinwheels. This is going to be so fantastic when it's finished!

    ReplyDelete
  26. that's beautiful! What a lovely project. That drainpipe would have stumped me for ages. I'd probably have unpicked it and started stitching it again before I realised!

    ReplyDelete
  27. lucky you saw he mistake when you were at this stage and not finished........looks great..........lots of stitching.......................

    ReplyDelete
  28. As I xcontinued to read I kept thinking: Oh no....whew....yes, a great save!! What a beautiful quilt. THanks for rejuvinating it under our TUesday ARchives this week!

    ReplyDelete

I would love to hear your comments so please leave one....I try to get around to answering ALL comments. If you are having trouble leaving me a comment here...email me at cathquilts(dot)gmail(dot)com(dot)au

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...