The End of the 1920s Farmer's Wife Blocks-

I have finished 100 of the blocks in this first book.  There were 111 in the book.  Some I didn't want to do because they were just plain boring or symbolic of things I don't like but I think there were a couple I just plain missed!  This is the first 66 which I posted before.

This is the remaining 34 that I finished today.  My thought is to border each block with either a dark or light fabric and then sash them which will make a pretty good sized quilt which I will quilt in 4 sections and then sew together.  That will have to wait a bit though.  I may start on the 30's one but not with the same determination I have had with this one.

This and the next two are closeups of some of the blocks I liked best.

 

Farmer's Wife Blocks, Some Charity stuff and Blocks for Our Guild Raffle Quilt!

I should have added some hand dyeing to the iist of things done the last couple of weeks!  This was the most successful of my last dyeing adventure.  The picture doesn't adequately show what a nice purple gradation it is made with Jacquard Deep Purple.  I also did some ice dyeing with random fabric which turned out very pale and uninteresting so may  just throw it into a dye pot and overdye.  My one experiment was quite successful though.  It was copying something I saw on the Ice Dyers list on Facebook.  Many of the dyers just put down dry fabric, then sprinkle soda ash and dyes on top and then put ice over everything..  I was sure I would get spots of concentrated dyes doing this but didn't.  I used a lilttle Intense Blue and Basic Blue from ProChem as the dyes and got some nice mottling which will be great for skies.

This is just a small sample of the 2 1/2 in blue strips I have filling 4  two and one half gallon plastic bags.  They will be used in making background squares for the Guild's newest raffle quilt. 

I made seven blocks so far and ran out of the fabric I was given to include in each block.

This was extra challenging.  I was given a panel with 8 scenes on it and needed to make a 50 x 60 in quilt or close to it.  I was also given a small amount of the gold and reddish fabric and the black.  I ran out of the gold so went into my stash when I got home and added the greens.  I also ran out of the black but knew it was the same block of which I had a bolt.  I also had to come up with a center block.  Of course the panel squares were not square so had to take that into consideration when figuring out the center block.

Our Guild had an open sew day at a local facility and I took several of the Farmer's Wife blocks to construct there.  This is the result of that day.  I had one other block but I had the measurements wrong so had to bring it back home.  Even home, I messed it up twice before coming up with a ho-hum block!

I did these three blocks yesterday.  The first one I did using the fast "Flying Geese" method rather than making half square triangles so it was super fast!  As you make four at a time with this method, I had 2 left over which I used today in a block!!

This is one of the two blocks I did today.  These were a little trickier than some and took a little more time.    This is the one that used the left over flying geese from the first of the three blocks above so you can see the truer color there!

This was the second block done today and definitely more challenging.  I had to use templates for all the pieces. 

Some Boring Quilts and an Update to the Farmer's Wife Blocks!

These are the three quilts I have made for our Habitat for Humanity program at quilt club.  We donate one to each new house that is built for this charitable organization.  They are all pretty much alike except for the different scrappy fabrics that they use.  Everything is made with 2 inch strips and the trees are basically 4 of these strips sewn together and then using a 45 degree or 60 degree template to made the top.  I am going to incorpate some different trees in the next one I make as well as add a row of sky on top of the houses.

 

Here are just a couple of the blocks I have done since I last posted.  Lots and lots of half square triangles in this last batch which took a lot of time and patience!

Here is the latest status of the blocks done.  There are 66 here so I still have about 45 to do to get the book done.  I disciplined myself not to do anymore until I finished machine quilting the above quilts as well as basting and starting the machine quilting on the Passacaglia quilt.  I have made some progress on that as well.  The quilting will not show for the most part as I haven't particularly cared for the ones I saw done that had hand quilting (which I would NEVER try on a quilt with pieces this small!).  It is easier than I thought it would be as I don't have to make big sweeping movement of this largesh quilt as the "blocks" are all pretty small.  I am free hand stitching in the ditch for the most part.

I will get back to my Farmer's Wife blocks after a day of dyeing tomorrow with friend Dianne.  I am going to experiment a little tomorrow so we shall see!

One last block!

Blocks and Birds

I lead off with this block as I had to do it 3 times to get it right!!  I had designed all the blocks in EQ8 and in a couple of cases I got the measurements slightly askew.  That was the reason for the first redo.  The second mistake was actually reading the directions wrong over and over again which resulted in it being an inch smaller than it was supposed to be!

This is the current status of all the blocks I have done.  I dedicate 2 hours each day to sewing but making these blocks has been an excuse not to finish 3 donation quilts as well as the Passacaglia which I finally finished appliqueing onto some background fabric.  All of these projects require basting which is my most hated activity!

I finished these two today.  The top one was all Flying Geese so I found a couple of sources on the internet for measurements for doing the shortcut Flying Geese method!  I used the one that made "oversize blocks" and then trimmed then down to the perfect size.  This method doesn't waste triangles and you make four at a time.  Sure made it easier!

The second block was probably the hardest one i have done.  It required templates and had lots and lots of "Y" seams but it all worked out in the end.  Not my favorite to do however.  The next bunch I has a lot that use a 5 x 5 grid which is difficult measurents when you are working with a 6 inch block.  In many cases I just diagrammed a 5 inch block and put a 1/2 border around it.

I was very surprised when I went down to the Ft Fisher dock and spotted the rocks just filled with birds!  It was high tide and late in the afternoon so the light was not good for pictures -- usually I don't see anything at high tide, especially with the everpresent people but they must have been tired as the birds just stayed.  They were most Short-billed Dowitchers but you can see a couple of Marbled Godwits which finally woke up!

There was a Ruddy Turnstone in this group.

Even though it wasn't obvious, there were probably Dunlins and Long-billed Dowitchers somewhere in this mass of birds.  

I try to get to Carolina Beach Lake as often as I can but the birds have been sparse although people have seen a Roseate Spoonbill there some days.  I did see this nice Snowy Egret fishing one day.  Because of the fierce tropical storm we had a couple of weeks ago, they have practically drained the leg to prevent inevitable flooding.  Fortunately, we had more noise than rain as the wind was ferocious.

 

Neo-natal Quilts and Farmer's Wife Blocks

This and the next two quilts were made for our Guild neo-natal program.  

This was made from the blocks that were not 60 degree angles which I didn't realize until I cut all the fabric up!  So I call it my original design!

I call this my Mother Goose quilt.  I made it a little smaller than I was supposed to in my hurry to get it finished, forgetting to add an additional border.  It's still cute though!

Just a couple of the blocks I have done the last couple of days.  I am getting better at not having to rip out seams because I have the half square triangles going in the wrong direction!!

 

Here is the current status of the blocks.  I am trying to do one a day but if they are super simple, I overachieve.  Some of my fabric choices are better than others but hopefully it will even out at the end.  I was worried about what to do for sashing but decided I will probably use a very dark forest green.  I do them as a reward for having machine quilted a baby quilt!  

My E-Mail Friends are a Bad Influence on Me!!

 

Years ago I got addicted to doing Dear Jane blocks and exchanging them with several email friends.  They were entirely too addictive (although they taught me a lot about quilting because they were such small blocks with so many pieces).  I ended up making about 1000 blocks, enough for several quilts and I still have about 50 I haven't used yet!  About 100 of those blocks were from another series of 30's blocks from a very obscure source!

Well, those email friends strike again as they started making "Farmer's Wife" blocks from two books, one featuring 20's blocks and one 30's blocks.  They are probably the only two books I have purchased in the past couple of years!

I used EQ8 to diagram all the blocks from both books but didn't start them when I was here last year.  I finally got a lot of unpacking done and some organization and decided it was time-- I had selected the fabric palette I was going to use last year.

These are the first five blocks I have done.  For some reason, even though I did them in the alphabetical order in the book, EQ randomly moved them around and I can't figure out the order if there is any!  So I just doing them in the order of EQ.  This one was pretty straightforward.  I am probably going to overlay part of the yellow but will decide for sure further on.

This one was a bear!  It ended up being 5 1/2 inches instead of 6 1/2 inches, thus the border.  The "grid" for it was 5 and when I did my drawing on EQ, I didn't do what I did with other grid 5 blocks which is to add the 1/2 in border all the way around.  So I ended up doing it after the fact.

This one was also a bear to do and it was much too big and then I trimmed down pieces and it became too small!  So another border!

Finally an easy one!

This was an easy one but did have 51 pieces so it took some time and a lot of ripping out as I kept sewing in the wrong directions despite my nice organization of the pieces on a piece of batting!

This is the palette I am using, many are very small scraps so it will truly be a scrap quilt.  I have just about used up one 10 in square already with the light purples.

I have got to get started quilting the many baby quilt tops I have made.  Here is another one which I haven't sewn together yet, having been distracted by the above project!  I was trying to do one block a day but ended up doing 2 each of the last two days!

What To Do With Those Pesky Scraps! A No Picture Day!

 Two years ago,  I took all my less- than-a-yard solids and solid substitutes (predominately one color pieces but have patterning) and cut them into strips.  I kept the full width (45 inches) strips separate from the ones cut from fat quarters which were only 22 inches wide.  My goal was to cut 6 of these 2 1/2 inches wide as I could then use then for borders or binding.  Usually there was some left so next I cut 2 inch strips and then cut miscellaneous sizes if there was any left after that.  I ended up with probably 50 to 100 lbs of strips sorted by color into 2 1/2 gallon bags and set into a deep box so they could stand up and not get wrinkled.  I have actually used up most of the purple strips in the 2 1/2 in length and the greens are getting more sparse!  I gave away a baggie of brown strips as down south I don't tend to use a lot of dark colors anymore.  This has made binding quilts more of a breeze as I don't have to cut the fabric.  At the time, I didn't feel this would be a good thing to do with my lively patterned fabric.  

This week I decided to take a crack at that patterned fabric and so far I have filled two trash cans with strips and pieces that are less than an inch wide or just the selvedge!  I decided to cut the fabric into 10 in squares (like layer cakes) and 5 in squares.  If there is any left, I just cut 2 1/2 strips or smaller.  There are bunches of fabric that I had used partially, some where I cut motifs out of a piece so it had lots and lots of holes.  Many of these were really nice fabrics of which I only had a quarter, half or eighth of a yard.  I cut the really nice ones into 10 in squares but only if I could get at least two 10 in squares (I use these in Delectable Mtns or just by themselves).  If there is fabric left, I cut them into 5 inch squares.  If the piece is wide enough left, I will cut smaller squares (4 1/2 inches, 4 inches, 3 1/2 inches).  If smaller than that, I just cut a 2 1/2 in strip and any left just gets stuffed into a miscellaneous bag if 1 in wide or larger.  

My reasoning for the sizes was (1) seems to be the popular sizes that are being sold online and in quilt shops and (2) I use a lot of the 2 1/2 in size which both 5 and 10 are easily divided by.  I am very very predominately a scrap quilter when doing traditional quilting and have been my whole quilting career.  My exceptions are of course my stack and whack and art quilts.  My very first quilts (applique which was my introduction to quilting) were scrap quilts, even before I had ever heard the term -- my first quilt teacher called me that when she saw my fabric selection for the sampler she was teaching!

I have emptied two plastic boxes of miscellaneous fabric leftovers!  I will have a head start on many charity quilts!  I am very very thankful to have one of those wonderful rulers with the slits in them so I can make very accurate cuts and go through several layers at a time! 

I should also note that I have a ton of black and white fabric -- I used to buy it with the intention of overdyeing it so have substantial yardage.  I make a lot of baby quilts using this fabric now so I cut the small pieces of black and white fabric into 3 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch pieces.  I use this in the quilts I have pictured quite a few times in my blog!  I have so much, I may decide to cut some into the 10 in squares at some later point.  I have been using quite a bit of it for backing lately as they are substantial pieces.