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 3

No 3 dress for Dress Me Up wasn't quite as time consuming as the first two.  I think it's really sweet.

But if you look carefully half way up the left hand side you can see  that a small pleat has formed in the fabric - as I started to iron it the backing shifted - an iron-on adhesive kind of gauze which re-inforces the front fabric and  helps prevent puckering.  The more I tried to get the pleat out the worse I made it, so now I need to do some thinking !.

Not being a good week, actually.  This morning I made another block for the Farmer's wife quilt and went to give it a press before trimming the edges,  Only then did I notice  that one of the fabrics was sewn in with its wrong side facing.  It's so noticeable - how could I not notice it when I was sewing. Now for some retrograde stitching - the polite way of saying unpicking.

But one person who does things right is Pam from the Friday Group who has finished her lovely log cabin quilt.  I really like this one, particularly the sprays of flowers at the centre of each log cabin.

But it's raining.  And I'd love to go out for a latte !  Why can't we have a coffee truck which trawls the streets with some approriate bells or music blaring so that I could just rush out and get my desire !

Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt

Now that my Gypsy Quilt is finished I have started on a Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt from the book by Laurie Aaron Hird. It's a pleasant change  to be working on something where each block is a different pattern.  And I am also enjoying going back to hand piecing -  so much better for doing all the fiddly little bits and pieces in some of these 6" blocks.

I'm wondering if I could sneak in some machining in some of the less complicated blocks though, or is that a no-no in the quilting world to mix up the techniques !  At least the house doesn't seem to get in such a mess when you're only cutting out one block at a time - just a basket of fabric pieces which seem to tone together and a folder to put the finished block in - no piles of cut fabric lying around.

As usual one of my main problems is getting every block to end up as the required 6" block plus seam allowances. But I did acquire a little gadget for folding the edges to make bias binding so I can see more basket handles coming up in the near future. I hadn't seen one of these gadgets until recently when a friend was making binding for a celtic mat.  What would we do without friends near and far to learn from and to exchange information with.

Looking up the dictionary for the meaning of the word friend after that last sentence I came across the word "trust" and I thought that was very applicable in quilting circles.  Because we trust our quilting friends to pass on useful information and tips and we trust that any criticism they might give our work will be helpful and constructive. And that is the only kind of quilting friend that I have.