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!

More Farmers Wife Blocks!

Friendship Block

Quilting is coming second or third these days, while I enjoy the last couple of weeks of summer. The last couple of weeks of freedom with my little girl before she starts school for the first time.

Honey's Choice

So I'm squeezing in time for sewing only after I've put in some time doing other things. The things I am really going to miss come September...the spontaneous walks, trips to the pool, and yes, even playing Barbies.

Old Windmill

But I have not forgotten about my Farmers Wife quilt. I am loving this long, meditative process. I love picking out random fabrics to combine in different ways for all of this crazy geometry. When I get a window of time, I put on some music, or a podcast (This American Life is perfect - an episode lasts just about as long as it takes me to make one block or two), and I get to cutting and sewing. 

Peace and Plenty

It's the most wonderful hobby. I reached a point this year when I thought I could take it beyond the realm of hobby into business, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I'm fortunate to be able to stay-at-home with Isabella, and each time I tend to speed away from that I find the need to put the brakes on. For me, it's not the moment yet.

Noon and Light

Because of this, I recently made a very difficult decision to turn down a place at a great university in London because it would compromise me a little too much and Isabella would need after-school day care. Though lots of parents do it, that was a sacrifice I had no real justification for. Like I said, just not the right moment.

Maple Leaf

 But I will be studying again, just online. We shall how that fits - I am optimistic and getting excited to start learning new things again. (It's interesting to see how those last few sentences reduced a weeks-long agonizing decision into such simplicity. I think that if my ego hadn't been party of it, it would have been very simple indeed.)

Mother's Dream

 In the meantime, there is no shortage of learning new things with this quilting process. Denyse Schmidt's Flea Market Fancy line makes these blocks come alive with whimsy and cheerfulness. And some blocks are downright frustrating.

Bat Wing

I think I've got nearly 60 blocks now, not all of which are pictured below. There are at least two blocks that I don't think I am going to do at all - both of which are flower baskets. The flower pots were stretching it, too. I think they may be a little bit too country-style for me. Maybe I will change my mind - we'll see!

Check out my Threadbias page for photos of all the blocks so far! 

Festival of Quilts

I am making this post happen, even though I am dog tired after walking around the Festival of Quilts all day. Apparently, it's the largest quilt exhibition in Europe. After today, I think I can believe that. It's held every year in Birmingham, England and this is my third visit, in the three years or so I've been sewing. Everything on display was wonderful to see, even the quilts that truly are not my style. The technical feats and artistry of so many quilts humbled me, as it has each  year I've gone. Here you can find quilts representing traditions of antiquity to protestations against war. Truly, textile arts should be given a better showing in the modern art world.

The lovely Amy Butler stall

 One thing that really stood out was the absence of so many modern quilts in the exhibition itself. There is a large section of the exhibit designated for "art quilts", and another for traditional quilts, but a lot of the sensibilities found in the online modern quilting scene weren't found here in abundance. In fact, I saw more of the modern quilts that I'm drawn to in the vendors' section, where you could find stalls from Amy Butler to the Japanese Echino and Kokka fabric lines.

Liberty - celebrating their new quilting cotton line

There was also very little attendance today from quilters under the age of 50, which surprised me this year. It seems like we are in the middle of a craft and sewing resurgence so I was expecting to see more people my age this year compared to the last time I went in 2010. The online sewing community is so vibrant and active that I keep hoping to see more of this in real life!

My old favorite - Japanese cotton and linen from the Eternal Maker shop

I came to the festival today with my friend Aneta, and three small children between us. It was a bit hectic with the crowd (and it was packed in there!), but our two girls absolutely loved it. They were talking about color, what shapes they could find...it was so great to see them interested. It does help that we found some Dora the Explorer, and then there were random unicorns and dragons to be found too. They never once got bored!

our girls, talking color and composition :)

Loved these colors somewhere near the Rowan booth

 There was just so much to see. If Birmingham wasn't an hour and a half away, I'd probably try to go again before the show ends on Sunday. But as it is, I have more motivation than ever to continue on with my Farmer's Wife quilt. I think I'm on block 60 now, which is more than halfway through!

New fabrics to come from Lotta Jansdotter - one of my beloved Scandinavian designers
plus, some patterns from the irreverent and cool Sublime Stitching!

 If all goes according to plan tomorrow, my day will be filled with quilting and scanning the pages of my online fabric shops for some of the sweet designs I spied today.

Lots of old and new with so much overlapping goodness to see

If you're the area, the Festival of Quilts is on until 19 August 2012 - check it out here!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am loving the idea of an online blogger's quilt festival! It was only a few days ago that I blogged about my first quilts, but I didn't have much trouble thinking of another early quilt I'd like to talk about here for my contribution to the quilt festival.

Before I started quilting, I bought Denyse Schmidt's Quilts book to get inspired. I fell in love with all of her quilts in there but the one that really caught my eye was this shabby chic, modern country quilt in red and white. I didn't follow the pattern, but the idea. I had all these strips laid out on my floor for a couple of weeks while I pieced it together. It was a total mess. I had a lot of trouble with the wobbliness of the bars because of their slightly curved shapes. This was my first project of the sort and learned a lot about sewing "wonky" lines. Anyway, I got frustrated with this quilt many times and in the end didn't think it would turn out as nicely as Denyse's quilt in the book. However, once all those blocks were sewn together, the quilt top worked its usual magic on me and I fell in love. I decided against traditional binding, because I wanted a quicker finish to this already very long project. So I folded over the backing an extra two inches or so and machine stitched it in place. Then I hand tied it with red yarn, completing the very homemade look. What do you think?

Scrap quilt sneak peak

Since I began sewing, I have kept just about every tiny cast-off that is left over from any given project. I hate to throw things away so I have been organizing them into little bags over the last year and a half. I was absolutely inspired by this post, so I finally whipped out those scrap bags and set to work on my own interpretation. The original pattern is meant to be funky, but I wanted to go a step further and be totally irreverent about it - more overlapping lines and wild color.

All of my scraps came from projects that I made for friends and a few that I sold on etsy. This is my way to keep a little bit of all that hard work for myself. I just finished the quilt top and haven't assembled all of the layers yet, so when I do I will definitely be posting the pics!

Complete Satisfaction!

Oh so pretty, even if I do say so myself.

As always, my girl is involved in the process.

I really love the end result of this type of quilting.

The baby boy getting this quilt will have it on his bed in his college dorm room. I can see it all now.

Finished size, a generous 47" X 60" (approx).

Boy's Quilt: Almost finished!

I am working on my first quilt commission. I have made about half a dozen quilts for myself, family, and friends, but have never done it for money. That is about to change. I think that each time I endeavor to get a quilt done, I am surprised by the amount of work and hours it takes to get it finished - like childbirth you forget the pain when the end result is so beautiful (and of course, it's not pain all the way through)! Yesterday, I finally finished the quilting part. I also treated myself to a new ironing board before getting started on the binding (isn't it just lovely? Simple pleasures, I tell ya.)

The person I'm making the quilt for only requested a certain color palette, but the rest was up to me. Let me say that making a quilt without a specific desire laid out for you is like cooking a meal for someone whose tastes you are totally unsure of. She seemed to like simpler square forms so once I decided on the fabric I thought the best way to show it off would be a modified "around-the-world" pattern, which is similar to the quilt I made for my daughter earlier this year. It really shows off color and fabric in a way that doesn't get dated over time, and I think it is especially nice for a boy. I will post the finished photos soon!