Farmer's Wife Frenzy

Two Sundays ago, I spent part of the day at work pre-cutting a bunch of Farmer's Wife blocks. Football season has started, and Janesville is full of fans, both of the Packers and the Bears. On top of that, the Brewers are doing exceptionally well. This meant that the mall emptied itself of shoppers as game times drew near on Sunday.

And. holy shingles! This pre-cutting thing works miracles. In three days, I made several blocks:

#011 Broken Dishes

You all might have noticed that I like to repeat 'themes' in my fabric selections. This time it was circles. And that navy fabric - it's really a pretty royal purple.

#006 Big Dipper

Quarter square triangles are not my favorite, and I'm trying desperately to ignore the one point that got cut off in this block. I don't know if I'll continue to succeed. However, I love this combination of fabrics.

#021 Contrary Wife

I'm trying to add lighter blocks in as I go along... And I've repeated the theme and fabrics. I just couldn't resist. Plus, fussy cutting makes its reappearance. Again, I would never do it for an all over quilt top design, but one off blocks... it's kind of fun.

#084 Spool

I'm actually really disappointed by this block. It needs more 'pop' in the color department. I'll probably be remaking this one. It's just too 'blah'. It's not helped by the very muted tones or the fact that the relative size of the prints is so close

#003 Basket

The handle is hand-appliqued. This is another one I might take the time to redo, mostly to secure the ends of the basket handle better, burying them in the piecing. I didn't mind the hand applique - that only took about fifteen minutes one morning.

I also precut Buzzard's Roost, but I wasn't happy with it, so I didn't photograph it. It's perfectly pieced - I just made a mistake when cutting and reversed my two fabrics so the values weren't placed the way I want. It's simple enough to rotary cut, so when I have some free time to pre-cut again, I'll add that to the to-do list.

While I was at the monthly Stitch 'N' Bitch, I paper-pieced two more blocks:

#005 Bat Wing

For this one, I used the fat quarters of Innocent Crush I received from my DQS 10 swap buddy. I love the look of this line, and the colors - it's just that the prints are freaking HUGE! And, hello! I work small blocks. I just don't dig the big blocks. So anyway, some more fussy-cutting to get a sense of movement. At the risk of being risque, Sandi thought this one looked like an especially talented stripper had gotten her tassels going in opposite directions.

Or an owl.

I'll let you all decide.

#001 Attic Window

Silly me! I once again forgot that the paper-piecing foundations available at the Yahoogroup aren't mirror-imaged so that the blocks come out they way their shown in the book. Still, not re-piecing this one, as I'm pretty happy otherwise. That awesome mustard green makes another appearance, along with a new acquisition in the form of that bright pinky-purple. It's actually a gradient fabric, but you can't see much of change in color, except for the top right corner.

So, seven more blocks into The Farmer's Wife Sampler. That brings me to seventeen completed. (Eighteen if I could the Buzzard's Roost that I just don't like.) I have about another dozen blocks' foundation patterns already printed, so expect a slew of paper pieced blocks before I move on to pre-cutting more rotary friendly blocks.

Weekend Recap

I've been a good little worker bee this last couple of days.

I picked my fabrics for the Test Your Skills Sampler. I designed my quilt top for the Modern Quilt Guild Kona Solids Only Challenge.

I even got some actual sewing in. I made the four 3" nine patch blocks for TYSS, and half the large snowball/nine-patch block. I have to re-do the snowballs - my piecing was somehow inaccurate, and they didn't match seams correctly with the nine-patch blocks. I'm anal enough that it just wasn't acceptable, so I threw the boo-boos in the scrap basket. Since they're just nine patches, I didn't bother to photograph them. When I get a little further into the TYSS, I'll post photos.

#071 Puss in the Corner

More fussy cutting, and that awesome Walmart fabric makes another appearance. Sadly, I even got anal retentive about how I cut the dots.

#093 Swallow

I deliberately went with lower contrast fabrics with this block. I have a lot of very dark, and a couple of very light, blocks. I need some middle ground to help keep the eye moving over the (eventual) quilt top.

Both prints are Walmart fabrics, and I'm still having some fun playing with fussy-cutting. I've determined that I would NEVER do it for a large quilt, but one off/sampler blocks, I'm okay with fussy-cutting.

I've also gone and pre-cut the fabric for another fix or six Farmer's Wife blocks, so I'll be ready for another round of sewing. I went through the book, did the quilt-y math and scribbled my own rotary cutting directions onto each page. I've also gone and denoted those that I feel need paper-piecing. In addition to those, I've found that there are a number of five by five grid blocks which would require me to cut things at 1/5 of an inch. The very idea makes my head hurt, so I'm going to be figuring out if I want to substitute blocks. 

I have a ton of scraps, a good portion of which I reduced to strips about a year ago. My sampler projects aren't helping the scrap situation much. Okay, not at all. I've been generating scraps far faster than I've been using them. I determined that it was time to start working on my strip quilt.

Sometime into one of the more recent batches of Farmer's Wife blocks, I realized that I should just use the string blocks as my leader/ender project. *facepalm* Why didn't I think of this before? These blocks would have gone so much faster!

Two days, nine blocks, one design and a bunch of pre-cutting done. It's been a good weekend.

TYSS Fabrics Selected

My Kona Lake arrived on Thursday of this past week. Yes, in fact, I had ordered it two weeks ago. fabric.com mistakenly sent me a truly hideous six yards of some slate blue print that had different pairs of ice skates all over it. Actually, there really aren't words for me to describe this stuff, so a photo will have to suffice:

Needless to say, I was pretty well horrified. Any person that I've sewn with or has seen my stash knows that I'm just not a novelty fabric person. Thankfully, fabric.com switched out the fabrics with no fuss, but I was delayed in picking out my fabrics as a result.

Now, I was going to work on my Kona Solids Challenge today. Upon sitting down to actually sew some of it, I realized that I just didn't feel like I had enough different fabrics to produce the right number of gradients.

So, yes, I did go and order two more Kona Cotton Charm packs, and the Kona Color Card, thank you very much. Yes, I know that my self-control sucks. What do you expect? I'm a quilter, which means that I and a serious fabric addiction go hand in hand. Needless to say, that particular challenge project is being put on the back burner until my goodies arrive.

Moving on...

Using the highly scientific method of draping fabric over the back of my couch, I first auditioned the blocks I'd made for the Skill Builder Series tutorials. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that I really liked how the majority of them worked. The fabric on the far right is my binding fabric.

I converted the photo to black and white, so that I could judge values. I was surprised to find that I liked having the yellow fabric. My eyes had deceived me, and it's actually lighter in value than the Kona Lake. Not by a lot, but enough to make a difference. This made me decide against the fabrics in the far left block. That salmon color just gets lost against the Kona Lake.

I played a little more, a process which I did not document in photos, but should have... I ended up discarding the yellow floral entirely, and switching in another yellow. With the exception of the brown background dots fabric, all of my selections are tone on tone, or nearly so. (Gee, what a surprise, right?)

I knew right away that I wanted to keep the three fabrics on the left. Despite the similarity in color to the background, I opted for the teal on the far right. I needed something other than that spruce green to bring some balance to the otherwise very warm tones I'm using. The yellow floral got switched, as I'd mentioned before, but mainly because I like the idea of having three prints that have a circular motif to them. I played with a couple of different shades of wine red (I have a lot to pick from), but ultimately went with the print shown above because of the lack of gray in the color. I needed something fairly pure in tone to foil against the very vibrant orange.

It's serendipitous that the fabric that I picked for the binding coordinates so well, especially considering that I didn't have any of my blocks with me at the WI Quilt Expo. And I totally winged picking the color of my background, just praying that the Kona Lake was close enough to the very pale aqua in the striped fabric that I wouldn't notice a difference. I got really lucky.

 And now, maybe I can actually go sew something!

Fresh Sewing Day

It's the beginning of the month, and I thought I would start sharing the culmination of the previous month's sewing from now on. Mostly so that I can look at my lack of progress and kick myself in the butt to do more.

My sewing time is aggravatingly limited - working two jobs will do that. But I am working on stuff, which is a lot more than can be said for previous months.

1. #012 Broken Sugar Bowl, 2. #016 Calico Puzzle, 3. #009 Box, 

4. #004 Basket Weave, 5. #002 Autumn Tints, 6. Urban Worm Completed

I can actually say that I had a finish last month, which is pretty amazing. I'm back on the Farmer's Wife blocks. Today, I'm starting the Kona Solids Challenge. I didn't work on my Double Wedding Ring at all; shame on me! I did clean up my sewing room, which has facilitated sewing.

Mrgh.. I look at my progress for September, and it feels pretty meager... I'm going to go sew something now.

I Hate My Brain...

I've finished Urban Worm, gotten back on the horse with the Farmer's Wife Sampler, and have actually been feeling creative. So, I turned my attention to the Kona Cotton Challenge once again. I'd actually designed a top for it in EQ7:

I like it. It's very traditional, very pretty... and would have made for a crap ton of piecing, and more effective with yardage, not charms. Not exactly what I was going for.

So, my brain has been stewing on this conundrum. In my sleep. I woke up two days ago with the image of a design burning a hole in my consciousness. It would not leave me alone. So I finally got a chance to draw it out and make some tweaks to this design:

The flying geese that are all the same color - that's just a placeholder color for while I play around with the charm pack and figure out what gradients are getting used. And now I have an almost pathological need to get a Kona color card, so that I can make up the gradients that the charm pack isn't going to provide me with.

And yes, those are flying geese on a curve.

I am a sick, sick person.

Attack of the Farmer's Wife

I'm finally back to my Farmer's Wife blocks. I've already decided that I'm going to call this quilt The Farmer's Widow. Why? Because I just wasn't happy with the randomly scrappy blocks at all. Mind you, I love scrappy. Just not uncontrolled scrappy. I'm happiest having control over my color palette.

I decided everything needed a touch of neutral fabrics/colors in order to tie the blocks together. I haven't decided on my setting or sashing yet. I'm not sure that I want to just sash them and call it done. I'll think I'd like my setting to not be so simple as plain sashing.

#002 Autumn Tints

I love the big circle print. The circles are perfectly 3" in diameter, perfect for this block. It's got a great weight and feel to it. And, would you believe that it's a Walmart fabric?!? I promise, I'm not kidding. I took a chance a few shopping trips ago and saw that Walmart had precuts on clearance. Regular price works out to be $5 a yard. I think I paid $3.50 a yard. I'm pleasantly surprised!

#004 Basket Weave

I switched the way the quadrants were laid out, to avoid  the look of a swastika. I also wanted to make sure that the lighter fabrics were on the outside, in case I decided to sash or set with a darker fabric.

#009 Box

Super easy block to put together. I think it took me maybe fifteen minutes of sewing, tops. I just can't imagine using templates when rotary cutting a block like this is so much faster.

#012 Broken Sugar Bowl

I couldn't see wasting the extra HSTs I would have had leftover from the strips I used to put #009 Box together, so I just used the same fabrics in this block. I like the contrast of the super red print against the gray.

#016 Calico Puzzle

Another super easy block. I really love the plum color against the mustardy green print. I think it gives this block a very Asian feel.

That's it for the Farmer's Wife/Widow blocks today. Keep an eye out here. I've a bunch of bright blocks that I made for this quilt sampler that just don't work for the new color palette. I'll be giving those away here. I'll also be hosting a give-away for an entire quilt top. It's time for me to just start letting go of some projects.

Urban Worm Completed

Urban Worm has been completed! Which means that my Rock Valley Modern Quilt Guild 'Habitat Challenge' is done. Whew!

I should probably be mortified to tell you all just how glad I am this project is done. Seriously, folks, there were moments that I wanted to just burn this pile and walk away. Mostly because I just wasn't invested in the fabric. I felt obligated to complete the project because we'd signed up for the challenge, but also because we'd been given the fabric.

Then there was the whole challenge portion of this. I'm totally not in love with the Habitat line. Not even close. It's got some interesting prints in it, but overall... Not my bag. And I was working with a whole freaking line! I just don't do that. I've only deliberately bought most of the prints in a line once...

All that said, once I finally buckled down and decided that I would work on this particular project, did I make this mini-quilt easy on myself? Nope. Not. At. All. 

I decided that I would hand applique a 'worm' made up of one quarter Dresden Plates. Then, once the top was done, nothing would do but for me to find one yard of just the right marigold color for the backing. On top of that, I need to get perl cotton in at least four colors to do some chunky, sashiko-style quilting.

Thankfully, I had the top done by the time we were due to to go to the Wisconsin Quilt Expo and I was able to find both the perfect color backing and perl cotton in four colors that were just off enough to bring some more interest to the top.

The backing ended up being a Kaffe Fassett cross-weave cotton, which has a really loose weave. I like it for the texture that it added to the quilt as a whole, but I don't think I'll ever elect to use it again. It's a little pricey, and I don't like the looseness of the weave.

The sashiko-style hand-quilting seemed to take forever.  I don't regret doing it, really. I think it gives a warmth and rustic feel to the quilt, that is desperately needed to alleviate the otherwise unrelenting gray.

Overall, I'm very happy with the final product. I wish I hadn't procrastinated as long on it. It really made Urban Worm drag on when it didn't need to. I still have to wash the quilt; we'll see how it turns out then.