Starry Farmers

Lasr August I made some 6" Farmer's Wife blocks from Laurie Aaron Hird's book and they were looking good.

In the lull after Christmas I brought the basket out again and had a look at what I'd done.  Considering the quantity of UFOs I have I decided that perhaps it was time to convert these blocks into a quilt.

There weren't enough blocks to show them off with just a small sashing as in the picture so I cut a heap of triangles to put on on the corners of each on-point patchwork piece to turn it into a square. Once again I was just using up left-over pieces from other quilts.

I had  designed (scribbled ?) a layout on paper but when I put all the pieces in place on the carpet it looked a bit of a mess. So on and off for two days I crawled around the carpet rearranging the pieces and threatening to throw the whole lot in the bin.

In the end I took a photo to remind me of what went where - I really did need to pick up all the pieces so that I could get from one end of the room to the other without entering into a long jump competition.  The resulting quilt top is  -

Most of the time I call it Starry Farmers but at other times I call it HotchPotch as it really is a bit of a jumble. If I was doing it again I think I might try putting the small blocks together with a dark green sashing as in the first photo and use it on point as the centrepiece of the quilt, then build it up from there. It would probably have shown off the blocks to better advantage.  The one thing I am pleased with is that when adding the border I decided to extend the side stars into the border to make them complete. It is 54" square and the binding will be dark green.

I'll piece together some more of the bigger scraps to make the backing.

And just for fun, and because the more I play around on the computer the longer I can put off the things I should be doing -

Fifties Dress No 2

These fifties dresses for the  "Dress Me Up" quilt certainly are not quick to finish, but are fun to do.  I love the curve of the collar on this one, which is the second in the series.

I've just started No 3 dress and it  seems simpler to do with its sprigged pattern.

And there's  still been time to make a few more blocks for a Farmer's wife quilt. I'm now about half through for a lap size quilt.

Our Friday Group

Yesterday Brandie showed us what her Quilting Group was doing so now it's my turn to show what our group on the other side of the world was doing today.  There are just five of us but our leader/hostess is away touring in a caravan with her hubbie - last heard of in Alice Springs - but she'll be back soon as another grandchild is imment - so we soldier on and keep quilting.

Pam is hand quilting a lavender log cabin quilt which is to be a gift for a friend.

Noelene was sewing off ends on her Bed Runner, made for the end of her spare room bed, folded in half for this photo.

Mary worked on her Celtic supper cloth - this is how I learnt about the lovely gadget for making bias binding.

And these are the blocks which I added this week to my Farmer's Wife quilt.

I hope you are all part of a friendly quilting group where you can get together with friends and sew, talk, display, talk, admire, talk, advise, talk, gossip, talk, eat, talk, laugh, talk, smile, talk and generally make yourself and others feel good, good, good.