Farmer's Wife

I've been kind of holding out to post about my progress on my Farmer's Wife blocks until I had them all finished.  The last few took a little longer than I would have liked but they are all finished now!  Woo hoo!

I started Farming last January, very soon after I started quilting.  I saw blocks popping up that were beautiful and I got really excited and wanted to start.  I even convinced my mom to start piecing blocks with me (and she was quick to let me know that her grandmother was an avid reader of the Farmer's Wife and a proud member of the W.C.T.U - ha!).  My mom finished her blocks really quickly and has her top completely pieced and basted but I've been kind of stalled with my piecing.

In the first couple months, I managed to piece blocks 1-60, then I got nothing more accomplished until this January.  I decided I wanted to make a king size quilt and drew out my own layout based on this one.  To make the quilt the size I wanted, I figured I needed to make it 11 squares x 12 squares = 132 squares.

I didn't want to put the blocks that needed appliqué in, since it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the quilt.  I have been obsessing over the extra blocks that Melinda @ the Quirky Granola Girl chose for her quilt and totally stole the idea. :)  I drew out all the extra blocks and rotary cut as many as I could.  I figured out which templates would work for a few of the tricky ones and made my own paper-piece pattern for 2 of the blocks (Tallahassee and Twisting Star).

There were a bunch of blocks I made in the beginning that I didn't like any more.  Some because the piecing wasn't great and others because they were too boring (too much white).  I ended up re-doing 12 blocks.  In the end I have 132 blocks that I really like.  Next step is to cut and piece the settings and figure out what I'm going to do about quilting this monster.