Susan: Schoolhouse

Here's my first block for the October row - yeah, running just a weeeee bit behind here.
 

  Here’s the little known history which goes with the school house. This is a small school house on the outskirts of Los Angeles in 1927. The students were studying the solar system, obviously. When one student asked the teacher why they had to study the planets, her answer, “Space is the final frontier”, had a long-reaching impact on young Gene Roddenberry, then six years old. No, really, it’s true. I read it in Little Known History by Itotally Made-Itup.

Lynette's Freedom Street

I love this row! 

It's all fused (except the flag, which will get hand-appliqued during evening TV time).

Oh, I did change it from a pieced row to a fusible applique row since the personalized row for Scott above it is all fusible applique. 

First I cut out some newsprint to the finished row size. Then I painstakingly drew out Deanne's design. I made some minor adjustments: First, I wanted to put in some horses that were on one of my scrap fabrics, so I took out the cute cemetery and shifted things a bit to leave a hillside for them on the house end. I think I added in the tire swing? and the bench? but maybe they were already in the pattern? Also, when I saw Ann's finished row, I thought, "how cool - she added a street in there, too." When I was drawing out the row, though, I figured out that it was just her flooring at the bottom of the row photo.  lol  :)   But I did add a street in, because I really wanted to use some cobblestone fabric in my FQ stash.

When I had my drawing finished in pencil, I went back over it with a Sharpie, purposefully getting a bleed-through to the back side. That provided me with the reverso pattern to trace for the fusible pieces. 

Then I created this astonishing explosion when I emptied out my scraps bin, pulled out three left-overs boxed from McKenna Ryan projects, and brought out any potentials from my FQs and yardages stash. 

Did I say I love this row? Frustrating to work in this mess, but so much fun to see it pull together. 

I had this terrific stone-looking fabric for the church, with a subtly-sparkly gold for the roof. The windows are supposed to channel a stained glass look, but, well - - -  I think they're cool, anyway.

The flag came from some Marine Corps scraps, and is the absolute perfect scale for this scene!  Also found a fantastic metallic copper print for the schoolhouse bell.

The house was fun. The fabric in the windows - at the time, I thought it was a great interest point for some funky curtains or something. Now, I think it's a little busy. But it's still fun, too. 

The horses: most excellent success. 

I should have waited to prep my trees and bushes until after I'd settled on my hill fabrics. There's not good contrast with some of the bushes in particular (although it's a little better in real life than these photos). Also, before I added the cobblestone street along the bottom, I decided I liked it better without that element after all. But I had already fused everything else to the background, and things were sitting too high to not have the road. So I put it in. Still, all in all I'm super happy with how this played out when I'd finished the fusing. 

All this row needs is the stitching. . . or maybe I'll just do it during the quilting stage. 

Thanks for all your work in sharing this QAL with us, Deanne! With the personalizing I've done so far, I'm appreciative of your time and effort. And I'm so looking forward to the next parts being done straight from the pattern again!!!  lol

Fun school block!

For this month, I picked the school block because I wanted to use some fun fabric and that seemed to be the perfect block to use them up!

Very fun and easy block,

I am looking forward to next month patterns!

Alida