Christmas Houses

This is Katherine's Christmas Houses quilt (I made up that name, I don't know the pattern name). The pattern is O Tannenbaum by Hilary Gooding.  Now that Katherine has told me this, I seem to recall her telling me that before.

When I first saw it, I kept seeing new shapes in the piecing--the red star in the center, the light green octagon, the dark green on point square---so that gave me some goals with the piecing--1) accent and highlight the applique and houses 2) accent the different shapes created in the piecing.

And, Katherine keeps telling me she loves feathers, so I added lots of feathers for her.

 Straight line quilting is a good way to highlight shapes, and I referenced Bethanne Nemesh's Sampler Quilt Smackdown for how to divide up those star blocks, with sstraight lines and feathers.. 

 I did minimal quilting on the houses--just enough to highlight and hold in place.

 The color of the backing is closer in the second photo.

Above is an 'after' shot and below a photo of the 'flimsy' so you can see the before and after.   I like these photos as comparisons because they're from the same perspective.   I must say, any wrinkles in the before photo are just because I didn't pick a floor space large enough to lay it out flat, and the ironing board legs are in the way--Katherine's piecing is flat and square.