Crawling Towards Completion

Thirty-seven more blocks to go. Three of them are do-overs, and one needs a m. I'm feeling an urge to actually quilt and finish something though, so I need to pick up some batting soon and finish out a top or two.

#105 Wild Goose Chase

I totally did not intend for the pink geese to be so perfectly fussy cut - the fabric has a tiling look to it, and I wanted to capture more pink than green. Still, it actually looks really good. I'm kind of sad that the 'sky' for the green geese looks more randomly cut, but I'm so not going back.

#106 Wild Rose and Square

I was not ready to do another red or pink block, and I've used too much gray for backgrounds lately. I let the squares in the corners determine my other fabric choices.

#013 Buckwheat

Paper-pieced,  and some old favorites from the fabric stash.

Sewing Progress

I know, I know. I haven't posted about the trip yet. Writing time since getting back has been very slim, and I'd rather do some justice to the trip, since the shopping was awesome, and the people more so!

I started this project on a whim months ago, and got the two blue-ish flowers done. Then I stopped. For a long, long time. Needing something to keep me awake, I pulled this project out right before leaving on Saturday morning. I had just enough time before Sandi arrived to cut some more hexagons with the Accuquilt GO!

I completed three flowers while on the drive. Clearly, I've decided to use brown for all of the centers. Why? I don't like using brown in my quilts, so I'm going to burn up what I have in my stash with this project.

Wait until you see the next flower! Let's just say it involves a certain *ahem* adult-themed fabric.

#040 Friendship Block

Slightly blurry photo, but, frankly, I'm too lazy to take another. It's way late :) Paper-pieced, by the way.

I used two coordinating prints from an older collection in my stash. I love this collection so much, but never cut into the majority of its coordinating prints out of fear. They're very busy, and I wanted to be sure about the project they would go into, as I'd never bought so much out of one line before.

#045 Grape Basket

I couldn't resist the fabric I picked up on the St. Paul trip, so all of the blocks I've pieced since getting back are out of what I purchased. This one came together easily. Again, I altered the sizes of the patches in order to make it rotary friendly. When it's not so late, I'll go back to Flickr and add patches sizes in the notes on this block.

#052 Hovering Hawks

Mmm... white and grey polka dots on yellow, and more grey. I swear, I was in heaven shopping on this trip! I ended up paper-piecing the large HSTs in the opposing corners, because my brain wasn't letting quilty math happen.

#101 Wedding Ring

Again, fabrics from the new purchases, except for the white tone-on-tone. This is probably the only block from this particular sampler in which I've nearly matched the colors as done by the author, but it's more grey and yellow, and I have so much more than I did :)

Again, I altered the sizes of the patches in order to make it rotary friendly. I'll go back to Flickr and add patches sizes in the notes on this block at a later time.

Seventy five patches into the Farmer's Wife. I have three more blocks in the Farmer's Wife that can be rotary cut easily. The rest, some thirty-four of them (one a re-make), I feel will be better served by paper-piecing. After that, I can turn my attention to the deciding which blocks to make to get to 122 blocks for my setting.

Last Week's Blocks

I actually pieced these all last week, on Thursday evening. I'd meant to post them during the day on Friday but then I got distracted with spending time with the family and cleaning before I disappeared for a road trip to St. Paul. More on the trip in a later post, because it was AWESOME!

#063 Ozark Maple Leaf

I've actually had the pieces for this particular block cut for a couple of weeks. I just kept skipping over it, despite its relatively quick and easy construction. Ah, well. It's done now!

#046 Hill and Valley

A very low contrast block - it's actually more attractive in person. However, I need a few blocks like this to make everything work well together. I'm still feeling these red-violet/raspberry colored fabrics.

#075 Rosebud

A bit of carelessness led to me having to re-piece one of the quadrants. Those big HSTs in the quadrants? Yeah, I sewed one on in the wrong direction, and then cut it, so I didn't have a rosebud in the end. No big deal. I caught the error before I cut all four quadrants.

#076 Sawtooth

I'm having a lot of fun picking fabrics for these blocks. I like to pair the unexpected. Here, a very contemporary print by Kate Spain with a Joann's Fabrics damask print.

Sewing and Sowing

Once again, some more Farmer's Wife blocks completed. Not as many as I'd hoped, by two. I used a batik in one, and the dye bled over into the white fabrics even with dry ironing. The other - I just kept sewing wrong. I got so frustrated it was safer to stuff the block in the waste basket along with the one with the batik fabric in it.

#001 Attic Windows

I think this was the final block I needed to remake to remove all of the cream from the quilt top. Much happier with this version.

#042 Fruit Basket

I'm officially into the blocks that are on a 5 X 5 grid. After working through one via paper-piecing, I decided to rework the patch sizes to that they'd work better on a six inch block. Click on the picture or block name to be taken to its Flickr page. I've made notes on all of the 5 X 5 grid blocks to indicate the finished size of the patches.

Fruit Basket is almost identical in construction to Grape Basket, which is one of the blocks I threw away. I'm hoping to get fabric cut for it later today.

#028 Duck and Ducklings

A couple of my favorite fabrics at the moment. That plaid, and some Michael Miller Cufflinks in green. Again, patch sizes adjusted to make the 5 X 5 grid work.

#050 Honey's Choice

Patch sizes once again adjusted to make the 5 X 5 grid work. The golden fabric is from the Joel Dewberry Heritage line. The spotty gray fabric is a Walmart print.

In addition to getting these four blocks done, I was able to work on my Double Wedding Ring top. I almost have two rows done. I need to sit down and complete a bunch of sub-units to make the DWR go faster.

Two More

Because I somehow forgot to post these blocks when I finished them five days ago...

A couple more blocks checked off, and a few re-drawn in EQ7 so that I can print the foundations for paper-piecing and have the blocks come out the right direction. If I'd remembered that I had the HSTs sewn, but not trimmed for another, there might have been three block finishes in this post, but my memory failed.
 

#067 Pine Tree

Not entirely thrilled with particular block, but I'm going with it. That dark green triangle is kind of throwing me off.

#051 Hovering Birds

I'm really liking this plaid fabric as a background. I almost wish I'd bought a couple of yards of it now.

Saturday Block Attack

This weekend is pretty much a sewing weekend. Today is Stitch N' Bitch. Yesterday, Zeb was super cooperative and independent, and I got to sew my heart out.

#027 Darting Birds

This is actually my second attempt at this particular block. I wasn't as careful as I should have been in the cutting steps, so it was considerably less than stellar, and definitely not up to my standards. Much happier with his second attempt.

#044 Gentleman's Fancy

Since I did Economy with black fabric, I decided to use white as the neutral in this one. If I'd been thinking ahead a bit more, I'd have gone with something other than orange. It wasn't until I uploaded the photos of the blocks I did yesterday that I realized that most of them had orange in them. *facepalm*

#023 Country Farm

Paper-pieced because I didn't want to figure out the math for the QSTs. Nice and quick to go together.

#087 Star Gardener

More 1" finished HSTs. I'm very ready to be done with HSTs this small. Speaking of HSTs, I have a lot of leftover HSTs from this project. I've decided to save them in a baggie. When I fill the baggie, I'm going to piece a scrappy HST top from them.

#014 Butterfly at the Crossroads

Some fussy cutting and a really fun black and white print. I initially paper-pieced this block, but was less than thrilled with how it turned out. So, I started over.

I ended up adjusting the size of the pieces so that the five by five grid worked better on a six inch scale. The patches in the corner quadrants all finish at 1.25" square. The sashing units, however, I did at 1" wide, to account for the extra .05" added to the corner quadrant patches.

I'll likely be doing this for all of the 5 x 5 grid blocks from the book.

Still Chugging Along

Despite the head cold migrating into my throat, making me lose my voice, and then feeling a need to sleep most of the day away on the couch, I managed to get some sewing done yesterday. I cut the fabric for eight Farmer's Wife blocks, and managed to piece three.

#080 Single Wedding Star

The points on this one aren't perfect, but I'm thinking they're within acceptable margins for the OCD side of my personality.

 #095 Temperance Tree

Now that I've done a few of these blocks with so many tiny HSTs in them, I'm being very selective about fabrics. I'm making sure they're thinner cottons, so that bulk is decreased, even though I'm already ironing all seams open at this size.

#085 Square Dance

I put this block off until I found the right fabric, because it looked so boring. I think I hit on just the right fabric with this print. It's a Kate Spain fabric, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. This way, it looks more like a pretty tiling.

With these three blocks, I think I'm at 59 total. That means I'm over the halfway mark if I decide to only make the blocks in the book. At this point, however, I'm pretty sure I want to do a different setting, and it's going to require 122 blocks. So, really, I haven't hit the halfway mark yet. Almost, but not quite.

It's a good thing I have so many block resources to refer to!