I haven’t hung a single piece of art in the new apartment because I can’t figure out where to put anything!  I walk around from room to room holding this frame or that and just can’t make up my mind enough to put a nail in the wall.  My mama is visiting this week so I’m hoping she can help me make some decisions.

One thing that I knew I wanted to do, however, was make a new quilt to hang above the couch in the living room.  I’ve had the quilting bug lately and I’ve been sewing non-stop these past couple weeks!  Last week I mentioned that I’ve been looking to Pinterest for inspiration… and here’s the pin that I settled on for the living room quilt:

The source link takes you to the Esch House Quilts pattern called Third Street neighborhood.  I’ve never used a pattern by myself before, and there were times when I struggled a bit because I’m used to blog tutorials with oodles of photos for each baby step, but I figured it out and I’m happy with the end result!

I used a navy and white/light blue color palette instead of the black/white prints from the original quilt and made the wall hanging size (48″ x 40″).  It reminded me of that song “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky” and in my head I referred to this quilt as my little houses on the hillside, hence the name!

Hillside Houses Quilt 

Pattern: Third Street Neighborhood by Esch House Quilts
Finished Size: 40″ x 48″

I won’t go into specifics of the process since I used a copyrighted pattern – you can go to the source if you want to make one of your own 🙂

But here are a couple in-progress pics along the way.  I had a lot of fun putting it all together and learned a lot about reading a pattern!

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the back, I used one big piece of this solar system-looking blue print with specks of gold (from JoAnn’s… it’s still a novelty to me that there are actually fabric stores near by!  I never found a single quilting store in San Francisco and I’m so used to ordering online that instant gratification feels like such a luxury).  This quilt reminds me of a dark midsummer night, so I liked the idea of a sky on the back.  I also used the cheater binding again – saves an extra step!

Before I hung the quilt on the wall, I rigged this “display” using the bar stools and some tape.

The cats enjoyed the quilt fort while it lasted 🙂

I quilted with straight lines, stitching in the ditch of each column and outlining each house.  It is definitely a goal of mine to learn how to free motion quilt in the future, but I’m still learning (aka struggling) with just straight stitch quilting.  I think FMQ would give a lot more interesting texture in the negative space, especially because after washing the quilt I had trouble with bunching, which I think could’ve been prevented with more quilting (and probably pre-washing, since it was one fabric in particular that didn’t play nice with the others).

Here’s the quilt hanging in the living room – the only thing up on the walls after a month of living here!

(And actually… I still haven’t put any holes in the wall!  More on that later, I had another AHA Pinterest moment…)

I really like the colors, and once it was up I noticed how many blue things are already in the living room… the built-ins have lots of little bits of blue…

the curtains are blue…

blue books…

the throw pillows are blue… and look – even hubby is wearing blue!

 

Three cheers for Pinterest, once again!   I’m  also linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish Friday… it’s been a while!