Playtime: the house block

The Playtime quilt has two blocks this month. The first was the airplane. The second is the house:


I've determined that this BOM is definitely not for the faint of heart. The first applique block was a huge challenge, and this pieced block was no cakewalk. It has been a long time since I've pieced something this intricate by machine (all those bars around the window finish at 1/4"). Thank goodness I managed to be accurate enough with my seam allowances that everything actually fit together! (My block is square, even if the picture isn't.) :)

The pattern didn't help. I actually didn't have enough of one of the backgrounds. I had thought all the backgrounds were cut in the first month, so I freely used the rest to do the little pieced setting blocks. Unfortunately, more pieces were needed. Ugh. On the bright side, I happened to have some of the exact same Moda marble in my stash. It seems like I have plenty extra of the rest of the backgrounds, so hopefully I won't run into this problem again (because if I do, my stash won't save me!).

The cutting instructions were also confusing for me. My mistakes resulted in me having just barely enough of the window frame fabric and the house siding fabric (I actually had to do some additional piecing to make the siding work). But it all worked out in the end. Phew!

Here's the progress thus far:


I can actually start putting the whole upper left corner together now!

If you haven't been over to Carrie's blog lately, you should check it out. Not only is there always wonderful eye candy, but she's also having a fabulous birthday/100th post giveaway.