My version of The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt, block [51]

There are a bunch of books and clubs out there that provide multitude of blocks from the public domain to create a quilt.  The two I know off hand are the Dear Jane quilt and The Farmer's Wife Sampler quilt.  The theme is to challenge yourself by making all the blocks, of various skill levels.  Most are pieced, but some are appliqué.  The Dear Jane blocks are 4.5", which finish at 4".  At the time that I saw this club for the first time I thought, these people are insane!  Now it doesn't faze me. 

In the middle somewhere, I came across The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt book.  These blocks are 6.5", which finish at 6".  I thought ok, this is more reasonable.  There are still some pretty small pieces in some of the blocks, but still more reasonable than the 4" blocks.  So, I bought the book and started making some of the blocks.  I didn't want to make all the blocks and I didn't want to duplicate the quilt on the cover.  I just wanted to get my hands working with all these small blocks and see what all the hype was about.

It is quite nice when you can finish a small block with all the small pieces.  Some of them are very challenging.  The book gives you the picture of what you have to make and the pieces you will find on the CD.  But you have to be able to translate the picture into a block, because they don't give you any further directions on how to construct the block.

There are 111 blocks in the book.  For the design that I have come up with, I needed 52 blocks.  I went through the book and decided which blocks I wanted to do.  I wrote them on a paper and put them in a jar.  Each time I wanted to make a block, one of my kids would pull a tag out and I would make it.  A while ago it ended up being put aside for other deadlines.

I little while ago I decided I wanted to finish this quilt, so I set a reminder on my tablet, for once a month on the second weekend of the month, to complete a Farmer's Wife block.  I started this quilt in Nov/2012, and for a while I was regularly making these blocks.  At this point I had made 39 blocks, leaving only 13 more to make.  That is 75% of the block made already. Yay!!!

Yesturday, I got the reminder and pulled out a tag. Block 51 is what came out.  This is one of the more simple blocks.  In the book it is called Hovering Birds.  Keep in mind that older blocks can go by numerous names depending on the area that I came from.

This is my version of The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt, block [51].  I made this one low contrast in colour.  All of my blocks are being made in old civil war type fabrics.  I haven't made a quilt in this look yet.  For my design, each of my blocks is going to be surrounded by a dark brown border.

I will show you the design in another post down the road.  This month I finished my block.  One done, now 12 more to go.  Maybe later I can show you some of the 39 blocks I already made.

Enjoy your evening everyone.