Look What I Did!

I moved a few blocks in and out and around until I came up with this arrangement for my scrappy string blocks:

Basically I was happy with it at this point. Except for the big wide solid black strings in a couple of the blocks. Notably in the upper center. Ruby Blue has some embroidery stitches in her repertoire. I thought I'd have a go at embellishing a strip while learning something new on my new machine.

This first block (which is from the bottom row, left corner) didn't go well. It took me four attempts to almost fill the strip with these little houses. I used a polyester variegated thread on top and just my regular cotton thread in the bobbin. I also made the mistake of leaving the even-feed system engaged, which is not recommended for certain stitches.

After I cooled down from that frustrating experience I picked another stitch, loaded Ruby with polyester thread in both the bobbin and on top, disengaged the even-feed, and produced these butterflies on another block:

I also chalked in a line to keep my chorus line of butterflies centered on the strip. In case you didn't notice, the houses are going downhill.

I think that touch of color through the solid black strip balances the color in the other black strips in the center of the quilt nicely.

On that wave of that success I decided to see what I could do to mask the imperfections of the block with the houses. This time I resorted to hand embroidery. A split stitch tree with lazy daisy leaves...

And then I had to add a couple of birds flying off into the distance.

Now I think I can start sewing the blocks together! :- )