Casa Amarela

A few weeks ago I ranted about a project that I was scared to start because I didn’t know if I was capable of finishing it.

It was a quilt based on this photo that was taken when I was in Porto, Portugal back in May……

I knew that I wanted to replicate the stairs and houses, but was frightened to start it!!!!!

I started out by printing the photo in an 8×10 format, using Black and White printing, on regular computer paper. I then used a ruler and fine point Sharpie to draw the major lines on the drawing. If the Sharpie is fairly new, the ink will soak thru the paper so that you can see it easily from the back side. I re-traced those lines on the back, giving me a reverse pattern.

I then printed out the reversed version of the line drawing using the poster function which allows the one page to be printed out onto 4 pages….2 across and 2 down. Finally, I printed the photo itself out onto four pages as well….of course I ran out of toner mid photo!!!

I began working with the fabrics by dividing the picture into straight-line sections and tracing them onto Golden Threads paper. I paper pieced each section and then sewed them all together. A couple of the seams were hand sewn to help me get the parts lined up properly.

At this point, I decided that I wasn’t happy with the piece, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. So, I took it to my Charity Bee the next week and asked for their suggestions.

They immediately said……add the details from the photo and add some shading to the stairs!!! Simple little changes, but they definitely did the trick!!!!

I was nervous about using gray markers on the piece to shade it, but once I finally got my courage up, it made a HUGE difference. I ended up adding shading to almost every part of the picture.

The quilting was fun, although I had to take several lines out and re-do them because they didn’t match with the perspective of the quilt.

Here is the final version, named “Casa Amarela”, which stands for “Yellow House” in Portuguese.