My house has a trampoline.

That's a lie. I have never owned a trampoline.

My April Stash Bee block has one though, and it makes me smile.

 

I have to say that  this block was sort of experimental for me.  Stephanie asked us for "house" blocks and specified the size, and colors for the sky and grass. She gave us full creative reign on style and technique.

First I decided it was about time to face my intense, irrational fear of curves and put a nice rolling hill in there. Not bad for a curve newbie right?

 Please excuse the terrible I-sew-at-night-with-no-natural-light-cell-phone-quality photo. 

The last block I did was heavy on the piecing, so I decided to do some raw edge applique for this one. 

I'm always curious about other people's design process, so if you are curious, 

here is how I approached this block:

I found a simple house clipart image that I liked via a google image search. I right clicked, and saved the image to my computer.

I used Microsoft Word to scale it up to size and make it mirror image and traced each part onto the paper side of Heat n Bond.

Then I played around with the original image to test out a few color schemes.

Once I decided on my 'paint' scheme I dug through my scrap stash... and built a house!

I decided the lawn looked sad and empty so I added a trampoline. 

The other 'new to me' technique that I tried was using tear-away, self adhesive stabilizer behind the trampoline (where I had to stitch the 'legs').

It definitely won't be the last time I use that stuff! I was yanking pretty hard on it to do the free motion stitching on these smaller parts and didn't have any of the stretching/tension issues that I usually have.

So, overall it took me several hours (5? 6?) to complete from start to finish, mostly because I had to start and stop a few times. Over all though it was a very easy block, and I am really happy with the results.

If I didn't think it would take me a decade to finish, I would love to do a whole town's worth of little house blocks.

Block stats: 12.5 " square, background pieced, house/trees/trampoline are raw edge applique

Fabric: sky is Kona Bluebell, grass is Kona Green Tea, assorted stash scraps

Based on this clipart image: Coloring Pages

So how'd I do Stephanie? Does my house meet your building specs? ;)