Farmer's Wife 32

A rather curious thing has happened with my Farmer's Wife quilt. After giving myself permission not to worry about the end of year deadline I'm suddenly feeling excited about this quilt again. As the deadline loomed closer this quilt was feeling like a chore and was causing a great deal of stress trying to figure out how I was going to get it done. 

I'm really glad that the blocks for this week were fairly easy ones. I've loved all of the quilts that recently popped up using the economy block, but have never tried making this block myself. It was as easy as they say and turned out looking very nice.

#29 Economy

The other block for this week is snowball. I debated making the snowball white, but I liked the combination in the book. Also with pictures of feet of snow not far north of us and a big storm predicted for tomorrow black seemed appropriate for a snowball. 

(I'm always a bit torn with winter. I think that it is my favorite season and I love the snow, but I'm not that fond of the bitter, bone chilling cold that steals my breath every time I step outside.)

#81 Snowball

80/111

81:15

Farmer's Wife 31

I had to look back to see what number post this is and was startled to see that my last Farmer's Wife post was September 25. Oy. I'm so glad that most of the crops here are out of the fields so hopefully the dust will be settling soon. It's dangerous to announce, but I love winter. The allergens are mostly dead, I get to drink hot cocoa, and I get to wrap myself and my loved ones in all of my knit and quilt lovelies. It also means I want to spend less time outside and more time working on my quilts so it shouldn't be too long before I'm caught up with my Farmer's Wife blocks.

#4 Basket Weave

#44 Gentleman's Fancy

78/111

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Farmer's Wife Friday 31

At the end of the month I'm taking a Judy Niemeyer Paper Piecing workshop with my guild. I'm not a big fan of paper piecing, and when we first made arrangements with the teacher she said that we had to use batiks. I'm not a fan of batiks, but since my LQS has a birthday special where you get half of your age off during the month of your birthday I bought my batiks. The thought of fabric I don't love with a technique I don't love has been filling me with dread. This week I remembered that I've done paper piecing for my Hobbit quilt (I was trying to find pictures to this finished quilt and I'm not sure if I've ever shared it.) I've also done paper piecing for a few of the Farmer's Wife blocks so really this workshop shouldn't be scary to me. This week I had 3 blocks that looked like paper piecing would be the best method for assembling them, and I remembered why I don't like paper piecing.

Up first is Gentleman's Fancy. (Yes, it's not finished.) If you look closely at the upper right black triangle you'll see some of the white paper peeking out from the corner. 

Next is Storm Signal. Would you just look at how nicely those points turned out! Unfortunately I forgot that the grey and black are supposed to trade places on two of the blocks so that there is a pattern in the block and it's not just a complicated way of making a 9 patch.

Finally is Rosebud. I still had a fair bit of reverse sewing on this block, but at least I was able to get it finished. I was too frustrated with the other blocks last night to fix them, but they should be pretty easy to finish this weekend.

#75 Rosebud

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Farmer's Wife Friday 30

Holy cow! I can't believe this is actually my 30th post on my Farmer's Wife quilt. While I'm enjoying working on this quilt I'm really getting excited to see the end of this quilt coming on the horizon. I've got a vision in my head of how this quilt will look, but I can't wait to see how close reality comes to my vision. Unfortunately these blocks were made before the stomach flu descended on our house so I don't remember much about them other than I like how they turned out. Thankfully I'm feeling better so I should be able to make a few more blocks this weekend.

#15 Buzzard's Roost

#55 Linoleum

#71 Puss in the Corner

#89 Steps to the Alter

76/111

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Farmer's Wife 29

It turns out my plan of easing up on myself has worked out well. Last Saturday I made 4 blocks and then on Sunday I decided to make 4 more. Since this weekend is going to be another busy one I'm saving 4 of the blocks for next weekend.

In the book Honeycomb is shown as a two color block. One of the members of the Yahoo Farmer's Wife group posted pictures last week of this block made with four colors. I loved how vibrant it made the block and decided to do a similar thing for my block.

#49 Honeycomb

I really love the Postage Stamp block. I don't know if I'll ever have the patience to cut enough pieces for an entire quilt with these 1" squares, but this block is cute enough to have me thinking about it.

#68 Postage Stamp

Rainbow Flowers is another one that has me thinking of possiblities. Not sure what's going to happen with this block either, but I've already started playing with it in EQ7.

#73 Rainbow Flowers

After finishing Steps to the Alter (I'll share that one next week) I realized I messed up on my Strawberry Basket block. When I was sewing it I was one light grey square short. I should have double checked if I really needed another light grey square, but instead I blindly cut on. The block looks okay, but the basket is lost without the dark grey triangle underneath all of the squares.

#91 Strawberry Basket

72/111

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Farmer's Wife 28

This week I've been feeling like I'm falling behind. This morning I realized I need to be easier on myself. Blueberry isn't progressing because I don't feel like ripping out the back. I'll get to it when I'm ready, but maybe it's time to knit some socks. I still have 10 days left until I need to finish September's Supernova Friendship Block. I also haven't received my partner's block for August so I don't need to pressure myself there. (She's still in contact with me so I know I'll get all of my blocks. This is supposed to be a fun quilt so I'm giving myself permission to have fun.)

With my Farmer's Wife quilt I'm going to focus on a different count. Rather than the fact that we are in week 36 and I should have at least 72 blocks made I'm going to focus on the fact that there are still 16 weeks left. Writing that sentence actually makes me feel a lot better. I'm only 2 blocks away from my "quota" of two blocks a week. I have 41 blocks left to make which means I'm pretty much where I should be to finish these blocks by the end of the year. I'm deciding to enjoy the journey of these blocks instead of stressing about a schedule or the fact that I haven't started attaching sashing yet.

Thanks for letting me get that out. Creativity can be challenging some days. I believe that blogs should be honest and show the hard parts of life too. I know that I'm not the only one who struggles with things like this. I've gotten lots of comfort from fellow bloggers and hopefully sharing my struggles will help some of you. So, are you ready to see this week's blocks?

#7 Birds in the Air

#25 Cups and Saucers

68/111

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Farmer's Wife 27

It feels like it's been a long time since I worked on any Farmer's Wife blocks. Life has gotten in the way of this quilt the past few weeks, but I think I'm back to working on this project every week. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to make a few extra blocks and will catch up so that I can still finish by the end of the year.

#9 Box

I'm not sure how much I like this block, but I really love the name. There used to be a flour mill in my area called Prairie Queen Flour and several stores still carry the name Prairie Queen. I even worked for the Prairie Queen Bakery for a while when I was in school.

#70 Prairie Queen

66/111

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Farmer's Wife Friday 26

I was so happy this week to get back to the book. Both blocks this week are straight from the book with no substitutions or alternations. It also looks like I'm getting back to some of the simpler blocks so maybe I'll have some time for some other sewing projects too.

I really have to give Lori credit for some crazy math skills. I'm not a fan of the templates, but figuring out the sizes for a 6" block with a 5x5 grid and seam allowances is insane. I'm so glad I could just use her templates and have the block come out the right size.

#45 Grape Basket

Morning was a lot easier. I love the nine patch variations. I The four black side units are designed to be flying geese with a solid strip attached to the bottom. I decided to eliminate the seam and cut 2.5" squares. I then sewed my white triangles to the top of the square to make an extended flying goose. This quilt has so many seams that I don't know if cutting out four will really make that much difference, but it did make assembly a bit easier. It would also make a huge difference if I ever decided to make this block for another quilt using prints.

#57 Morning

After playing with the Farmer's Puzzle block in EQ7 last week I finally broke down and bought the companion CD for this quilt. I'd read some reviews saying that the CD didn't work in EQ7 so I was hesitant to buy it. Since it was on sale on Amazon I decided to risk it. All I needed to do was change the file type to "Previous EQ Versions" and the CD worked perfectly. Since I've run out of space in my apartment to lay out all of my blocks I had a lot of fun putting all of the blocks I've finished into EQ. I'm not sure how to put the layout I want into EQ so I'm using the layout from the book for my sketch. I know that I've finished over half of my blocks, but it's still surprising to see how full the quilt is.

64/111

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Farmer's Wife Friday 25

This week I've decided to make another block substitution. I know that the swastika is a sacred symbol in Hinduism and several other religions, and that it was a symbol of good luck for Europeans since antiquity. It's not surprising that such a simple geometric block with such a positive meaning would be turned into a quilt block (there are several swastika quilt block patterns out there.) I debated included Farmer's Puzzle in my quilt. It's a very dynamic block with an interesting secondary pattern of flying geese, and I can understand why several quilters choose to include this block in their Farmer's Wife quilts. I struggled to get past the swastika and when I shared this with my husband he encouraged me to leave it out. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Farmer's Puzzle quilt block I did a mock up in EQ7 to show you what I'm talking about.

While I was playing with EQ7 I decided to change out the colors and see what the block looked like repeated in a quilt and put on point. The swastika is still there so I doubt I'll ever do anything more with this pattern, but it does create a striking design.

I looked through The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns and found Mill Wheel. This block dates back to 1934 and was published in the Chicago Tribune by Nancy Cabot. I really love how many different blocks there are that use a 3x3 grid. 

#33 Farmer's Puzzle Mill Wheel

I love the Broken Sugar Bowl block. I've been making a list of blocks I want to play with more when I finish this quilt. This block is definitely going on that list. I know that Broken Sugar Bowl is a block that has been used many times before, but it's still got a lot of potential in it.

#12 Broken Sugar Bowl

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Farmer's Wife Friday 24

I finished the last of the blocks that I had planned on redoing. I'm still not completely satisfied with how Corn and Beans turned out (in case you can't tell the new one is the block on the right.) I plan to do another day of redos when I finish the second half of blocks so I might give this block a third try. It might also have a date with the rotary cutter and will be replaced with a four patch.

Up next is #67 Pinetree. Isn't this an awesome looking pinetree? As I was looking at this block I realized that it was just a variation of Temperance Tree. The block turned out okay the first time, but it wasn't very fun to make. I also have come to the conclusion that while I love my black and white color scheme trees in black and white look kinda dumb. I searched through Jinny Beyer's The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns and found this block called New Home. It was originally published in Good Stories in 1907 so I felt like it was an appropriate substitution. (See that Corn and Beans...blocks can be replaced!)

#67 Pinetree New Home

The last block for this week is Tulip. I got to play with a little more of my dark dark grey fabric for this block! (I only have a fat quarter of the dark dark grey so it's saved for very special blocks.) Is it starting to show that I'm missing some variety in my blocks? I know that this finished quilt will be stunning so I'm sticking to my plan, but I'm so glad I have my Supernova project giving me some much needed color right now.

#96 Tulip

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67:35

Farmer's Wife Friday 23

My glorious moment of being completely caught up and half way finished with this quilt was so short lived. Once again I find myself behind. I've decided not to be too hard on myself for this though. I've proven time and again that I can catch up and the important thing is to not quit. When I started this project I looked at lots of Farmer's Wife quilts. I was a little puzzled why people would make 50 or 80 blocks and then decide to stop. Having hit the 50 block point I completely understand why people stop there. It's enough for a very nice lap quilt and frees the quilter up to move on to newer things. (My list of future projects is growing steadily larger.) That said, I'm not calling it quits yet. With every block I finish the image in my head of what this quilt will look like becomes clearer. I already love this quilt and want to see it achieve all of the glory I envision for it.

#11 Broken Dishes

#19 Checkerboard

I've also got all of the HSTs and flying geese units sewn for my corn and beans block. The second attempt is giving me just as much trouble as the first one, but I'm seeing some hope that the finished block will be better.

58/111

65:35

Farmer's Wife Redo

When I started my Farmer's Wife project I knew that there would be some blocks I would have to redo. Since I've been making at least two blocks a week and most weeks I've been making more after spending hours on these blocks only to get to the end and find they weren't perfect I knew that redoing the same day I messed up wasn't a good idea. I also knew that small mistakes that bugged me in the moment wouldn't matter after stepping away from the blocks. Last weekend I hit the half way point in my quilt. Okay so the research I've been doing has shown the setting I've selected might require 121 blocks instead of the 111 blocks so the half way point could still be 5 blocks away, but for now we're just going to ignore those extra 10 blocks looming on the horizon. The good thing about the setting I've chosen is I can add extra fabric to the blocks that aren't quite 6.5" so I only had to redo 5 blocks.

Century of Progress was one of the first blocks I made. I was never very happy with how the center looked so after joining the Yahoo Farmer's Wife group and getting access to the paper piecing patterns I decided to try this one again. I'm so much happier with how this block turned out. I'm even contemplating a medallion quilt and using this block as one of the rounds.

#18 Century of Progress

I probably didn't need to remake this one, but I wasn't happy with how the center lined up. It's not very noticeable in the pictures, but in person it stood out a lot.

#30 End of the Day

For some reason I swapped the color placement as I was working on most of these blocks. I'm really not sure how I chopped every single point in the block on the right, but I'm happy the problem got fixed in the new block. 

#80 Single Wedding Star

This is another block that probably could have stayed. I struggled so much with this block. The one on the right is actually my second attempt at it. It still bugged me that my geese looked a bit drunk so I gave it one more try. Not only do I have a flock of sober geese my block is exactly 6.5"!

I have one more to remake today along with this week's blocks. Since these are replacements the count is still 56/111. 

67:50

Farmer's Wife Friday 22

Happy July 4th to all of my fellow Americans. Five years ago my brother-in-law had just graduated from his masters program and started a new job. He asked that my husband and I wait until July to get married. We looked at the calendar and saw that July 4th fell on a Saturday that year. Since most of our guests were travelling from out of town getting married on a holiday made perfect sense. I can't believe all of that happened five years ago. Even more amazing is that I've gotten to be the wife of this amazing man for the past five years.

On to this week's Farmer's Wife blocks. I try to avoid swearing, but sometimes it's just necessary. Since it feels weird using traditional swear words I tend to invent my own. In honor of Y seams the swear word of the week has been Yak. I went to a quilt show last weekend that had a few antique quilts. I was amazed how many of the quilts from the early 1900s used Y seams on blocks that we now make with extra pieces.

The first block is definitely a Yak block. I used the templates, measured my seams, and things still don't line up. I know I probably should fix mistakes as I go, but after four and a half hours working on these blocks I was happy enough to have something that resembled the picture. 

#37 Flowerpot

Since I haven't had a lot of success getting blocks to be the right size when I use the templates I decided to make this block with half square triangles. The 1" HSTs do make the black bars a little wonkier, but I think when it's in the quilt it won't show as much.

#43 Garden Path

I love how my last block this week came turned out.  The top corner does have a little extra fabric, but it's the right size and my points all look pretty good.

#47 Homemaker

56/111

61:55

Farmer's Wife Friday 22

I'm so glad I saved these blocks for today. I decided to look at what blocks were next and there are Y seams in the next two blocks! I'm so tempted to either skip them or just quit. Unfortunately I love this quilt and have committed to doing all 111 blocks. I guess I'll have to suck it up and do it, but I want the record to show that I am not happy.

At least with these three blocks I didn't have any issues. I really love how impressive the Star Gardener block looks. This is another of those blocks I'm thinking about playing with in a larger size. Maybe doing one of those single block baby quilts.

#87 Star Gardener

Another really easy one was Evening Star. I love how much a white star pops on a black background.

#31 Evening Star

The last block in my trio is Ducks and Ducklings. I'm not completely sure what this block has to do with the letter it's attached to, but it's such a cute name (and block) I really don't care.

#28 Ducks and Ducklings

I was really excited to see that Quilt Story is featuring a Farmer's Wife quilt this week. Not only is it the quilt I'm working on, but Amber made it monochromatic with shades of red.

53/111

57:25

Farmer's Wife Friday 21

I'm actually on top of my Farmer's Wife blocks this week! I finished three this weekend, and then found out Tuesday that my workplace was surrounded by water. I work with adults who have mental and physical disabilities so I wasn't worried about my job, but I was very worried about how my people would be handling life in the shelter. Today one of them greeted me by saying she got to go to camp the past two days and I knew everything was okay. On Tuesday I was able to distract myself for a while by making three more blocks. I've decided I really want to work on quilting my Hedgepigs and Hares quilt so I'm saving the second set of blocks for next week.

#52 Hovering Hawks

I had a minor heart attack with the Darting Birds block. After finishing all of those tiny pieces (if anyone's interested there are 60 pieces in this 6" block) I was pressing my block like a good quilter. I was struggling to get it to lie flat so I gave it a shot of steam. My iron spit an ugly blot of rust on one of the white squares. I ran to the sink, but cold water didn't get it out. I asked the members of Late Night Quilters on facebook what I could do. I got tons of great suggestions and unwittingly started a discussion on steam vs. starch. Since I had vinegar on hand I tried rinsing my block with vinegar and then used a little dish soap and was able to get the spot out. 

#27 Darting Birds

The last block was a nice break. It's a little wonky looking, but after the fiasco with the last block I was a little afraid of doing a proper pressing job. I'll go back in my July 4th fixing spree and give it a proper pressing.

#85 Square Dance

50/111

54:40

Farmer's Wife Friday 20

This week I owe a huge thank you to all of you who read my blog. Yesterday I didn't have any Farmer's Wife blocks finished. I was really tempted to just forget about it, but a little voice in my head kept asking what I was going to post on Friday if I didn't have my blocks done. I was ready for work and had an hour to spare (yes I wake up crazy early) so I decided to see what I could get done. I unpicked the black side of wild goose chase and redid the block. I'm seriously thinking of making up a paper pieced pattern for this block and seeing if I can get my geese to look a little less drunk, but for now it's okay.

#105 Wild Goose Chase

I also worked on Friendship. This block is one of the few blocks in the entire quilt that has to have 5 colors to work. I have a fat quarter of the very dark grey that is reserved for these blocks. I'm still a bit tempted to go get a little more of it and add it into some more blocks, but my other two greys are working well and I still have a lot of them left. This block also shows the importance of using pins and not sewing in a hurry. I had about 30 seconds left before it was time to put things away so I hurried to finish this block. 

#39 Friendship

I'm getting very close to my goal of 56 blocks by July 4th weekend. I'm starting to think that it might be a good idea to dedicate that weekend to reviewing the blocks and fixing the things that are still bugging me. Maybe now that I'm half way through this project I'll have the skills to do a better job on the blocks that have caused problems for me. (And time to do those little fixes like ripping out a seam and sewing it with pins.)

47/111

52:20

Farmer's Wife Friday 19

I'm so close to getting caught up. I've been doing 3-4 blocks each week that I've set a new goal of having 56 blocks done by July 6. If my Fourth of July weekend turns out anything like Memorial Day I should be able to make a lot of blocks. 56 blocks will put me half way to my goal of 111.

I used templates for Farmer's Daughter. I could probably work out the math, but a 5x5 grid in a 6" block is going to result in some wonky measurements. One of the tricks I've learned with the templates is to place the fabric on a sheet of sand paper (I prefer 150 grit.) Without the fabric shifting the templates aren't nearly so much of a headache.

#32 Farmer's Daughter

For Temperance Tree I went back to my usual method of HSTs and rotary cutting squares. There's a little bit of accuracy troubles, but the sashing will help with that.

#95 Temperance Tree

I'm not a big fan of baskets, but this one is so much fun I might have to play with a quilt made from this block.

#42 Fruit Basket

After work one night this week I was putting together these blocks and my husband was surprised by my organizational system. I was struggling to keep all of those tiny pieces straight so I pulled some containers from our cabinet that were missing their lids and assigned one container to each block. (The fact that we have so many containers with missing lids might be part of why my husband was surprised that I had an organizational system.) I've put a piece of masking tape on each container and write the name of the block I'm working on. I've heard of people using paper plates to do this same system, but this is what I had on hand.

I've been storing all of my fabric for this quilt in a large tote. I've been trying to keep similar colors together, but it's been getting more and more mixed up. This weekend I finally got fed up with my fabric bin, and organized that too. I have a lot of yardage I'm using for this block so I cut up an old box to use as dividers. If I was making this in a scrappier version I think I'd make dividers for my lights, mediums, and darks. I've been saving the papers from my templates to use as scratch paper so that's at the back of my fabric. By organizing my bin this way I have enough space to store my blocks neatly in my bin too. I cut a divider for the back so my blocks are in one section. The other section is where I'm storing the tiny bits that are still big enough for blocks, and the extra HST units that I accidentally make. 

This is my first week with this system, but I think it will make me a lot happier.

45/111

51:30