It's finally here. Today my pattern is featured along with other designers. When asked about "my happy place", I immediately thought of outdoors, flowers, a comfy chair to sit in and, of course, some quilts. This is my ideal backyard or my happy place! While there are alot of applique pieces to this pattern, if you take it one step at a time, it comes together quickly.
First, it starts with the base fabrics. I was very fortunate to receive these great fabrics from Northcott Fabrics. Northcott was extremely generous in giving all of the designers fabrics of their choice to work with AND they have donated lots of fabric as give aways. Please be sure to support Northcott Fabrics whenever you have the chance. I chose a sky fabric, grass fabric, the white fabric I needed for the birch trees and the purple fabric for my Lilac bush.
Following the pattern, I cut a strip of fabric for the sky and a strip of fabric for the grass/hills background fabric. Following the curved line in the pattern, I drew a "hilly" line across the green fabric using a erasable fabric marking pen (in case I needed to change any part). Using scissors, I cut along the line. It gives a better look that a rotary cutter, I think. Make sure when you cut the green fabric, you keep in mind the total width (top to bottom) of the project. I used Steam A Seam Lite 1/4 tape on the back of the green fabric to fuse it to the sky fabric. Be sure to trim after you have the sky and grass fabric together to the size the project needs to be.
Of course, I have already traced all of my applique pieces onto Steam A Seam Lite and fused the pieces to the appropriate fabric colors for all of my shapes. I then put the shapes into little baggies so I wouldn't lose track of those little pieces. Be sure to trace all of the pieces that will be on the same fabric together so you get fuse one big piece then cut out the individual shapes.
Starting with the birch trees on the right, I placed the applique tree pieces on the background but I didn't fuse them in place. The fusible web is a bit sticky so everything will stay in place until you have everything exactly where you want it. I did put a crease down the center of the background for a point of reference. Be sure not to forget that there is a 1/4 inch seam all of the way around the background. I then placed the birdhouse poles on remembering to leave space for the chairs. Notice that I traced all of the poles the same size even though the birdhouses are at different levels. I will cut them back when I place the birdhouses on to get the up and down look I want to have. I placed the birdhouses on after I got the poles in place. You may be moving the poles and birdhouses a bit when you put the quilts in between.
I decided to place the chairs next as I knew they would be the most fussy to place with all of those pieces and one chair is mirror image of the other. The easiest way to get this done is to put the back section down then put the arm sections together. Once I did that, it was easy to put the chair together. If you are careful, you can move the chairs around a bit to get them right where you would like them to be.
Here's a picture of what I have placed down so far.
Placing the birdhouse holes was pretty easy. Next are the quilts. I fused each quilt to a piece of fabric. This made it much easier than trying to exactly place those tiny pieces properly between the birdhouses. After I "pieced" each quilt, I trimmed around with the rotary cutter to make sure everything was straight. You can then fuse the quilts to the background or you could just stitch the top edges to the background so the quilt is more 3 dimensional.
The tall house have two holes but you can make yours anyway you want! When placing the flowers on, I put the stems and leaves down first. This made it much easier to put the flowers on. Once you have everything where you want it, carefully fuse everything in place. I do a light fuse first to make sure nothing shifted then, following the fusible web instructions, fused everything permanently down.
I hope that you enjoy my pattern. You can download it by clicking HERE.
The first give away is from Anita Goodesign. 
It's the Premium Collection Anita's Sampler Quilting Designs with a value of $250.00!! Worldwide Shipping / Shipping Cost paid by winner.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
The second give away is from Electric Quilt. It is their quilting software Electric Quilt Version 8. It has a value of $239.95 Please be sure to visit Electric Quilt's website and see all of their great products.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Here are the other designers for today and a link to them.
Words & Stitches
True Blue Quilts
Meanderings Along Lizard Creek
Creativeblonde
I hope you are having a great time with this event.
loreen
Give Away Rules and Guidelines
Give aways offered by sponsors are assigned to the various bloggers for their featured day. There are no prior announcements on who is doing which sponsor except to the sponsor themselves. You will have to visit the blog or the featured blog to enter the give aways. Winners will start to be announced on September 11, 2018 and finsih annoucing winners on October 10, 2018 on www.seamstobesew.com. In most cases, the blog where you won at also will announce their winners. You must give a valid email address when you enter the give aways, any email returned loses the ability to win automatically.
With the exception of Show and Tell Day, all giveaways run for approximately one week. You are given 3 days to answer the email. If you do not answer within 3 days, a new winner will be drawn. Check your spam/junk mail folders so you don't miss that winning email. There are no exceptions to this rule.
If you are notified that you are a winner, in most cases, you will need to provide your name, address, city, state, zip code, country, telephone number and email address. In some cases, you will be asked to comment on the blog to enter the give away. Please thank the designers for their time and thank them for the pattern. Thank the sponsor by buying their products for the give aways. This helps them continue to offer great prizes for these types of events. You can also comment on their social media pages. Please do this even if you don't win. They love hearing from you.
No purchase is necessary whatsoever.j You must be 18+ years old to win a gift. You are responsible for claiming and paying any tax owed on the value of any gift that you win. Prizes valued at $500.00 should be claimed.
All winners are chosen at random. All winners will be announced on the blogs via the Rafflecopter entry form and/or posted by the blogger a the site where they won and also at www.seamstobesew.com. All winners must allow their first name and first initial of their last name to be announced on this blog. Odds of winning a prize a based on a total number of rafflecopter entries during each week and in total for all give aways. This give away is void where prohibited by law.
Most give aways are international shipping this year and in some cases, you will be asked to pay for shipping your give away. Further information on the costs, etc of shipping are at Seams to be Sew's website.
