Farmer's Wife Friday 5

I'm trying not to be hard on myself with this quilt, but my perfectionist instincts are rearing their ugly head. I used to be much harder on myself and would beat myself up over not being perfect whether or not it was in my capabilities. When I started quilting 3 years ago I realized that if I was ever going to finish quilts I needed to focus on the process and understand that perfection was not possible for me at that point in time. By taking this attitude I have learned a great deal and love quilting. (I've even noticed this attitude has spread to other areas of my life and I'm much nicer on myself when I'm not perfect.) I'm beginning to see some of the perfect points and blocks I wished for when I started. Now I struggle with the question of when is good, good enough? If I know I can do better is it worth the extra time to do it again? With this quilt it's one 6" block out of 111. Will the imperfect points be obvious (or even noticed) when mixed in with the others or will it always bug me? For right now I've decided that blocks that are the right size but I'm not totally happy with will stay. If at the end of the project I still don't like the blocks I can always remake them. Since I have a tendency to write notes in lots of places and might not remember where my notes are at the end of the year I will write what I learn about the blocks here so I can remember what to do next time. (Also if anyone else is making these blocks you can learn from my mistakes and hopefully make better blocks your first time.)

End of Day is one of these blocks that has my voice of perfection lashing out at me. Towards the end of the block I realized I could divide the block into (4) 3.5" squares. Each square could divide into a 2" white, 2" black, and (2) 2" black and white HSTs. (Measurements include seam allowance. Squares will finish 1.5".)

#30 End of Day

I think my perfectionist voice has multiple personalities. While one side is shaking it head at me over End of Day another side is doing the happy dance over Attic Windows. (Seriously check out how great those points look!) I was starting to worry that my quilt was leaning too heavily on the darks so I reversed the lights and darks from the book. It never did look like a window to me so I didn't see a point in having a white center. The black center gives a nice change and will help balance out the other blocks.

#1 Attic Windows

This means that I've made 12 blocks and am officially 10% done with this quilt! In celebration I'm sharing a picture of all of my blocks laid out. The final quilt will be on point with sashing, but it's hard to do 12 blocks on point and I still haven't found that perfect shade of blue so I just laid the blocks out side by side for today.

 

12/111

17:10

Progress!!!

I finally feel like I'm making progress on this sweater. I'm 15 rows away from the armscye (which apparently is a fancy word for arm hole.) The colored high lighters are a really great motivator. I've set myself the goal of finishing at least one row a day this week. Monday and Tuesday it was only one row, but it's one more row than I had the day before. In March I'm going to an overnight quilt retreat and I'm hoping I might be able to wear this sweater in place of a coat. This might be a bit unrealistic since it assumes I can finish the never ending sweater in a month and that the weather will decide to warm up by March.

Nevertheless the end of this sweater seems to be in sight. I've even started looking for buttons. I want this sweater to be in my wardrobe for at least the next 10 years so I'm avoiding the owls. I think the moose might also be nixed, but beyond that I'm not quite sure. I think I'm going to try and find something with a Celtic design but after looking at KnitPick's site that narrows my search down to about 50 buttons. 

Fogarty Creek Blazer

2013-14 Mystery Quilt Step 5

I have some confessions to make before I begin this week's post. First: I bought the fabric for this quilt because one of the new Kona colors is called Kiwi and I love both the Kiwi bird and fruit. I did like the shade of green, but I picked it because of the name and found colors that I thought looked good with it. I also picked colors based on how they looked on my computer screen. I've since ordered a color card so next time I order solids I'll know exactly what color I'm getting. Second: I followed the link in my first post to see what the finished quilt looks like. I know this is cheating, but I didn't want to change the design without first knowing what the design is.

Step 5 calls for the remaining HSTs and the 3.5" light/medium blocks to be sewn together. (I was looking at my Farmer's Wife group and saw this block is in that quilt too. I'm sure it has many names, but in the Farmer's Wife it is called Contrary Wife.) This is where the risk of buying fabric online comes in. I was a bit hesitant when it arrived, but I decided to go with it. Then as I was cutting I found out that I only had 1/2 yard instead of 3/4 of a yard and didn't get the 74 squares called for. As I auditioned it with the last week's block I became more frustrated with it. It clashes a little bit in the picture, but on the ironing board the lilac really showed that it didn't belong.

The good part of buying fabric because of the name is I bought lots of it. My thought had been I would use it to bind the quilt, and possibly use it in a pieced backing. I had enough green to cut seventy-four 3.5" squares and there's still a bit left over. (I told you I liked the name fabric.) I love how the green looks with the tan and purple.

I tried four blocks together to see how they look. I am so glad I decided to use the kiwi instead of the lilac. It really brings the quilt to life. I can't wait to share the finished top next week. Hopefully the weather will be nice enough that I can get some shots outside in good light.

Farmer's Wife Friday 4

I was so excited when I saw this week's Farmer's Wife blocks. Finally I got some easy ones. I thought the math was fairly basic and happily cut and sewed away at my blocks. I couldn't believe it when I finished two blocks in an hour. Then I had the heartbreaking moment when I went to trim my blocks and found that finished at 5.75". After taking a break I made a second attempt and felt a bit like Goldilocks. This time my block was too big. I finally gave up and printed the templates from the book. Turns out the reason I was having so much trouble with the block is because the center block finishes at 2 and 1/8". After using the templates I salvaged the block that was too big and made the second block in 50 minutes! However since I spent 2 hours 40 minutes working on this quilt before getting my finished blocks that's what I'm adding to my counter.

#58 Mother's Dream

#77 Seasons

I've decided to save the blocks that look good, but are the wrong size. I'm not sure what they'll become, but I'm sure I'll find some project for them.

10/111 (I've hit double digits! Whoop whoop!)

15:55

Blue Gloves

The reduction of WIPs on the quilting front continues. My hope is to have four finished quilts by the end of February. (That sounds impressive but one top is basted and is going with me to Saturday's workshop and two are heading to a long armer this weekend so really there's just the mystery quilt to finish.) Unfortunately this means there hasn't been much knitting going on around here. 

These little gems keep working their way out of my bag. It's so nice to be able to knit on something small that actually lets you see progress without the trick of multicolored highlighters.

Fingerless Gloves

I got a set of highlighters for the green sweater. I was only able to find a set of 6 colors, so I think yellow will be assigned to two days. There were lots of questions about the pattern I used for my green sweater last week. Sorry for not responding, but things got away from me. I'm going to try and start linking to my ravelry pages every week so you can easily see the pattern and yarn I'm using and find other posts about the projects. There's no visible progress on the green sweater so I'm not sharing a picture of it this week, but here's the link to the ravelry page though if you want info on the pattern: Fogarty Creek Blazer.

2013-14 Mystery Quilt Step 4

In November I wrote about the first three steps (here, here, and here) about the mystery quilt along that my quilt guild is doing this year. I was sick the night step 4 was handed out so this project was put on hold for several weeks. I was really worried when our January 6th meeting was canceled due to extreme cold, but thankfully the organizers of the mystery e-mailed us steps 1-5 so we could keep working. I've seen the churn dash block popping up all over the place and was so excited to discover step 4 had us using the HSTs from step 2 and the divided squares from step 3 to make 14 churn dash blocks. 

Farmer's Wife Friday 3

This week I told two people about my plans to make the Farmer's Wife quilt this year. Both of them questioned my resolve to do two blocks a week this year, however I was a little surprised when they questioned why I was going to take so long to make this quilt. I should point out that one of them is a very talented seamstress and the other is an extraordinary quilter who works at my LQS. (She's the one who taught the drunkard's path workshop that allowed me to make my penguin quilt and is a huge cheerleader for me.) I think I had both of their voices in my head this weekend when I decided to celebrate my fabric purchases by making the two blocks I skipped in addition to the two blocks I was already planning to make this weekend. I now understand why I decided to give myself a year to make this quilt. I spent an hour and a half making Century of Progress block Saturday and six and half hours on Sunday making the other three blocks.

I paper pieced this block. I really hate paper piecing, but I think it was the best choice for this block. I wish my centers would have matched up a bit better, but overall I like this block enough to keep it.

#18 Century of Progress

I really feel like my HSTs are getting better. I need some more practice, but it's exciting to see improvement.

#51 Hovering Birds

When I started this quilt I knew there would be weeks I'd do extra blocks. I should have stuck to my plans of doing simple blocks on those extra weeks. There was a lot of seam ripping and some choice squirrel words used in the making of these blocks. (I find squirrel noises much better at stress relief than swear words and you don't have to worry about who might over hear you.)

#79 Silver Lane

The last block I worked on this weekend was Country Path. Most of the squirrel words were used trying to figure out the stupid corner units. I ended up simplifying the block and making solid white triangles in the corners. The block is slightly smaller than 6.5" so I haven't trimmed it, but with a scant quarter inch seam on my sashing it should be okay.

#24 Country Path

Farmer's Wife 8/111

13:15