Cottage CQ...Woods Pieced

What a piecing adventure this has been! I've got the woods section laid out and sewn (but not to the foundation yet).
There were a few tricks along the way that I'd like to share with you all...

One concerns getting that perfect piece of fabric, the right value and exact color, on the spot as I needed it.

I liked this green tone on tone print here, but it was too blueish. Dye-Na-Flow to the rescue! This took all of 30 seconds.

Another little trick helped me piece fabrics of quite different weights and weaves together without ripples or distortion.

That is some fusible interfacing cut to size and about to be ironed onto some lightweight, wiggly silk. I especially needed the silk to behave because it has a tree trunk printed on it, and that trunk had to stay straight.

There was some contortionist sewing involved, I must say.
Most of the time it went o.k. Here is a series of pictures that shows one tricky place I got out of...it was pretty high stakes, too!

This tree photo had to fit into that irregular shape to the left. In this picture I have traced over the shape with yellow quilting paper (known back in design school days as "trash paper").

I slipped my print behind the traced shape and just cut it out from underneath, adding seam allowances all the way around.

As an aside......I was able to do this because the fabric had been treated with a pre-coat called inkAid before printing, and the inkAid made it fairly stiff. This pretreatment gave me brighter colors and sharper detail in my prints which was great, but I sacrificed the "hand" of the fabric in exchange. When I go to embroider through it I will be punching little holes through the coating. Worth it though, in this case. I didn't use the inkAid for the grass and beach prints, as I want those soft and the detail there isn't as important as in the leaves, pine needles, etc.

OK, back to insetting this shape....

I was slightly nervous about pulling this off, I admit.

When piecing a large complex shape like this, I start in the middle and sew first one side and then flip it around and sew the other, from the center.

Not too bad here! Those two inner corner areas are a little bulky and got slightly munched, but nothing a hot iron and some hand embroidery over them won't solve.

Here's a detail shot from the other side of the quilt. I was as careful as I could be to keep all those tree trunks paralell.

And here is where I am as of now....

I'm using a different print of the cottage, one that isn't shadowed across half of the front. I like that tree in the foreground, too.
Overall, this section is about 26" X 40". Next will be the grassy section, and finally I'll get to do the beach (that's desert).
I will sew the whole thing completely together before I start any of the embroidery.

Actually, the embellishing is the desert part, isn't it?