Happy New Year & Wonky House #1

To all my Asian friends, Happy Year of the Dragon to you!

May this coming year bring you peace and prosperity.

As I work for a Chinese couple, I have a bonus day off today, so much sewing progress coming up!

I joined Jane's Wonky House Block Swap.

Here are the fabrics I settled on.

This is my master sketch. I drafted it at 13 inches and it will be trimmed after piecing.

I copied the master sketch by hand on art paper, which is slightly thicker than typing paper. I then covered it in clear contact and cut it apart. I noted seam allowances on the perimeter and straight-of-grain guidelines. Labelled each piece.

I ironed and starched all my fabrics, then ironed together several fabrics so I could cut them at the same time. (This dramatically reduced any slipping during cutting.)

Here you can see the white template on top of the white background fabric with the seam allowance added on two sides. What was I thinking? White on white is hard to see.

So here it is again. I found this yellow ruler that I got from Jan Mullen to be perfect for this job. I have three fabrics layered here. The template is paper side down and it does have a slight friction on the fabric to reduce sliding.

I first lined up the straight of grain...

Then cut my fabrics, adding the seam allowance in the process.

Cutting the fabrics was pretty straight-forward and completed in a couple of hours. I tidied each stack away here in my project box as I went.

I put together my first block in no time. It came together beautifully. I will do the rest with chain piecing.

Here is the first block. The door and windows will be raw-edge appliqued with machine stitching.

Please have a look at the Flickr group set up for this swap. These houses are amazing!