Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL Parade/Glass Houses

Today is the Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL Parade hosted by Sandra, mmm quilts. This is the 7th QAL of Sandra’s which I have participated in and this year’s pattern was again a fun make. I previously posted about my progress on April 1st, which was the start of the QAL and then on April 10th when my nine blocks were finished. It was nice to have 2.5 months to finally finish my Glass Houses Quilt, so named because I used Allison Glass fabrics, although I waited until the last week to finally finish it. 

Part of the delay was due to two vacations and several trips to the GP House and my indecision on whether I wanted to machine quilt with vertical straight lines, my first choice, or horizontal wavey lines. As you can see, the vertical straight lines, 1” apart, was decided. Since Glass Houses is going to be a wall hanging, I thought the straight lines would add a more graphic look but used #3817 variegated Aurifil thread so the quilting wouldn’t look too stark. The binding is the same black Cross Stitch fabric used in the sashing. My original plan was to used the multi-color print as in the cornerstones for the binding but after machine quilting, I realized it needed to be the same fabric as the sashing to better frame Glass Houses.

If you read my Previous Post about becoming a happy pieced backer now, I had to make one for Glass Houses since I had three leftover quilt blocks made with Allison Glass fabrics from my Ernie Express Quilt #2. This is my third piece quilt back and I’m now at the stage in which I feel guilty if I don’t make one. Normally, for a wall hanging I prefer the backing to be the same fabric and light colored too.

Glass Houses was finished four days before the parade and we’re having iffy pic-taking weather besides unprecedented poor air quality with heavy smoke from the Canadian Wildfires both here and at the GP House. The front bench was moved so Glass Houses, Petal Pop and Ernie Express #2 can be taken together as this is going to be the darling Granddaughter’s new bedroom ensemble at the GP House. The Master Quilter Holder was glad to be standing behind the bench so he didn’t have to crouch down to hold the 54” square quilt but he did have to hold it up as high as he could which wasn’t too much easier.

I had fun with this year’s Collage of all the quilts I made to Celebrate A Famous Canadian’s Birthday. While I was making Glass Houses, I was thinking that this would be the 7th one which is a lucky number and Sandra must also have some sort of magical powers for me to participate in all seven of her QALs plus making other patterns of her’s. I like to come up with “mmm” names for her and “magnificent” came to mind which quickly changed to “Maleficent” the powerful fairy in Sleeping Beauty. Note Maleficent is a fairy, albeit a powerful one, and not a witch or as I say magically wicked which makes “mmmicked” a fun word, don’t you think? So, I thought it would be “mmmicked to add a graphic to this year’s Collage which was  easy for me to come up with my MMMaleficent. All I needed was to grab Sandra’ blog photo, which is very nice by the way, then the Maleficent pic with Angeline Jolie, apply a few apps like PicMonkey and Voila AI Artist and then iPhone photo editing to draw the hair and make the lips red on my iPhone. Fun, right? I thought I should explain this so Sandra doesn’t think this graphic was already available on the Web, although I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was.

The Rainbow Neighbourhood theme was very fitting for this year (one last pic of Glass Houses amongst an actual rainbow neighborhood in Allentown/Buffalo thanks to Google and picMonkey). I want to thank Sandra again for another wonderful QAL and if she isn’t going to banish or turn me into a mouse, I look forward to participating again next year.  I’m sure it will be mmmagically fun.

Wishing every one a safe and Happy Fourth.

Linking up with MMM Quilts Parade of Rainbow Neighborhood Quilts