Little House Quilt - Developing Your Lot #2

This is part 2 of Getting Started On Your Little House Quilt.  In this discussion we will explore the development of the "lot" on which you will "build" your Little House.  Keep the vision of "building a house" in your minds eye as you undertake this quilt and you will understand the process.  You can't put the windows on the house until you build it and you can't build it until you get the site developed.  So, this is our site development.

Start with ground and sky.  What color is your ground?  Take a look at your photo, what time of year is it?  Are the leaves on the trees or on the ground?  Is there snow?  Green Grass, stones? What does the sky look like?  Is it day or night, morning, midday  or sunset?
 This is the beginning of your artistic license, it can be any time of year you want, any time of day or night.  You can pick something entirely different from your photo, just be clear about what you are trying to express and be consistent.
Be bold in your fabric selections...this is your house!  If you look at the quick selection of fabrics that I pulled out this morning you can see a variety of "blue sky" and "green ground".  The fabrics that are very plain, don't pop out as much as some of the more exciting "textures" might.  Think about this when you are picking your landscape base fabric.  This is just a base that you will be building on by adding other landscaping elements and of course, your house.  We will add, trees, shrubs, flowers, stones, water, animals, cars, what ever to our landscape as we go along.  Remember "building".
Don't get hung up on the colors shown here, they are just an example, choose what pleases you, your sky may be a luscious peachy sunset color, or a pale dawn, it might be midnight with stars out...you pick.  Let your fabric do some of the work for you.  In some of the fabrics below you can see the suggestion of what could work as clouds, hand dyes work well here.  Same way with the ground fabrics.  Want to do your quilt in "sepia" tones, you might think about a piece of muslin that you tea dye or coffee dye.  For this project you are the landscaper and you have complete license to do it any way you want!

In your photograph of your house,  there is a definite place where sky meets ground, this is called your horizon and will be a key feature in where you will place your house on your quilt once you start building it. so make sure that you give yourself plenty of sky above and ground below to work with.  You can trim it down to your desired finish size after you place the house, but for right now, give yourself plenty of both to work with.
You will take a strip of sky fabric the width of your desired quilt plus give yourself an additional 6 inches in width, same with your ground fabric.  Stitch these two together at the horizon line.  See example below:

Okay, you are ready for the next step...Sighting Your Little House!