Christmas houses

It's been awhile since I've woken up in the morning itching to get back to a quilt project before I've even had coffee, but this little wool project almost has me doing that. I still get the coffee first, but then I go directly to my stitching.

It's a pattern called "Welcome to Christmas Town" by Chris Malone. I found it in this current magazine:

The pattern calls for fusing cotton appliqués and then machine embroidering them, but I'm hand-stitching wool appliqué on a cotton background and then I'll hand embroider and maybe add some beads.

I love auditioning different colors! I finally decided on red and pinkish-purple houses with a variety of roof and chimney colors.

Freezer paper patterns are ironed onto the wool.

Usually I pin the pieces down with short appliqué pins, but I used dabs of glue on the skinny tree trunks.

I use one strand of cotton embroidery floss to whipstitch the pieces down, unless I have the right color of Genziana wool thread, then I use that. Sue Spargo uses Genziana in her projects, but it's pretty expensive and I can't buy it locally.

This is where I'm at this morning. (That's a spool of Genziaza.) Now the challenge is to take enough breaks from stitching so I don't get a stiff neck!

Have a colorful day