Casa Amarela

Today’s Travel Log Quilt comes from the beautiful city of Porto, Portugal. Michael has been there many times, and I have had the pleasure of joining him for two of those trips.

Having grown up in West Texas, I know what a FLAT city looks like…..Porto is NOT one of those…..

The city is nothing but up and down and up and down and up and down….you get the picture!!

On our first trip, as I was trying not to get lost….and failing (this was prior to Google Maps), I came across this sweet street and loved the yellow house at the top of the stairs. I quickly snapped a photo as I walked past…..

This image stayed in my mind as I returned home and I finally decided that the only way to get it out of my mind was to make a quilt from it…..what else!!!

The things that excited me about this project were trying to get the perspective of the steps and adding the details to the house. I decided that I wanted to piece this as much as possible which meant having to come up with a paper pieced pattern.

I first blew the photo up so that it filled a sheet of paper and then printed it in black and white. I used a fine-point Sharpie to trace over all of the lines that I saw in the photo…..

Now the good thing about using this pen on paper is that some of the ink soaks thru the paper, providing a reverse design on the back….

exactly what I needed for paper piecing!

I blew this reverse image up to the size that I wanted………

and started playing with fabrics…..

I had so much fun quilting in the details…..

The final quilt is a fun reminder of a sweet day roaming around the hills of Porto…….