Tuesday 16 October 2012

More progress

 There is precious little time for blogging, but I wanted to put up a few photos. The Farmer's Wife quilt top is finished...I think. I may widen the sides still, but I have until the backing fabric arrives before I commit to that. (Pay no mind to the religious icon hanging near the bed - I loved it when I bought it in Greece...but next to the bed it just doesn't belong - husbands joke!)

 In the meantime, I'm making a row of extra blocks, possibly to piece onto the back...another "we'll see!"
When this project is over, I will resume a few others, already lined up in the queue. There are random quilt blocks I've made out of curiosity, an unfinished table runner for my grandma, a hand-quilted pillow top I'm making from Hungarian fabric, and that gorgeous feather block you see in the center. The feather is a pattern from Anna Maria Horner that reminds me of something from Anthropologie- I'm thinking wall-hanging. Sewing is the perfect respite from all things stressful - namely, the environmental law class I'm taking!

More to follow soon!

Friday 5 October 2012

Farmer's Wife. Continued.



 I am still plugging away at my Farmer's Wife Quilt. I actually have three more blocks to piece together, but have already begun putting together the quilt top itself. To some, it may be a haphazard way to work, but I am more inspired by the visuals of putting it together. This way I can amend the last of the colors I will be adding to this mix. Also, I have been studying away for my degree and it is taking double the time I thought it would take during the day, so there are fewer hours left for sewing.

Tall Pine Tree
 The FW Quilt is spreading like wildfire throughout the online sewing community. I'm happy to say that I've been part of the torch relay and a new group has started up a sew-along on Threadbias. If you're thinking about trying it, I would highly recommended participating or at least referencing this group. There were a lot of bumps in the road that I had to just figure out myself, and it's so much better to learn from someone else's mistake rather than have to pull out the seam ripper!

Two types of settings that will alternate
To include here what I mentioned on the group forum, I will say that I had a lot of trouble on block size consistency, no matter how careful I was. I will take some hits for shaving too close to the template paper, etc, but in the end I felt like some templates were slightly off (again, as someone mentioned, maybe it was my printer). Also, I found some template repeats - my number 3 was equal to my number 12. And some blocks I found I could piece by eye after a while!

This is called Waste Not - but I prefer Ninja Star!

Wedding Ring

Wild Geeese
 In the end, if you find your blocks are slightly too big or too small, you may not need to worry if your sashing is forgiving. For example, since I'm alternating squares by putting every other on "on-point," I have some leeway there. I was also able to make adjustments in the seam allowances for my blocks that ended up a half inch or so too small. My final block size is 8.5 inches with the background fabric sewn on.


These would make cool wall-hangings themselves..



Now I just have to make a decision on how I'm going to put together the back, and how I will quilt it. By hand? By machine? Maybe a combo? And what design? I want something simple, but also something that I haven't done before. I hope I can have this quilt finished by Thanksgiving! There, now I have a deadline - let's see if I can meet it!