Still plugging away on my Farmer's Wife quilt

So......after a bit of coaxing.....that is me hyping myself up to continue with the Farmer's Wife quilt, I managed to get some more scrappy blocks done.  I trim them to size and cut them on a diagonal in order to make the corner units of the blocks.  

By this time I am slowly getting into making the strip blocks and the variety of the scraps.  I take a break for lunch, and after sit there evaluating the design board.  I am still not sold on the whole look of the quilt at this point, but I am not ready to abandon the quilt yet.  I tell myself that maybe if I just put the border sashing around the block, it might look better, or at least look more contained.

It did do something to improve the block, but I am still not sure.......  I keep flip flopping back and forth, I don't like it or it's ok.....back and forth.  I stuck with it long enough to complete a row, plus some bits and pieces to do other blocks.

So here it stands.  Now I am really on the fence with this one.  I don't really like it, but I also don't hate it.  I am so indecisive.  I'd hate for this amount of work to go to waste.

I am going to have to cut some more strips if I am to continue, so for now, I am filling the time with other miscellaneous quilty things, like binding.

A bit of this and that

A couple of weekends ago, I got myself organized for a workshop that I am doing, through the Halton Hill Guild.  It's a scrappy quilt, but can also be done with a planned scheme.  I can't quite remember what the pattern is called.  It has the word star in it, but that's all I remember.

I have a collection of Kona solids that I've had in the cupboard for 8-10 years, waiting for me to start making an Ocean Wave quilt, with black for the main squares.  That one still has not materialized.  I started collecting these fabrics through Sew Sister quilt shop as a 4-fat quarter bundle each month.  I don't have every colour, but somewhere along the way I told myself that I had a wide spectrum of colours and that I didn't need anymore, so I cancelled the program.  What you see below are all the colours I had, except for the really light shades of colour and the blacks, greys and browns. 

  

They look pretty nice there on my sewing table, all lined up.  I cut two strips of each 55 fat quarter colours.  What you may not see clearly in the picture is the grey that I plan to use as the background.  If you enlarge the picture, on the right hand side, close to the bottom, you may notice the corner of the grey.  The background is 3 meters of fabric, all cut up into 2 different sizes of squares.

I am looking forward to the workshop and now I am ready to go.  Actually, maybe I should get my Featherweight out and make sure it is running smoothly and that I have all the accessories together.

In the meantime, between working on my AP&Q UFO challenge  and other various things, I am also trying to get all my donation quilts hand binded and ready to go out.  Last Thursday my mom delivered 3 of them for me.

I have another one done and one about halfway done with the binding, so that is what I will be working on today.  Yesterday between eye appointments and household chores, I managed to get another 4 NICU quilts quilted.  I didn't finish until 8:30pm, but they are quilted and ready for the binding.  I think it would be too much to ask, to have these ones binded too, but maybe I can at least try and get the binding prepared.  We'll see......

Enjoy your weekend everyone.  Make the best of it!

Some progress on the Farmer's wife quilt

This is my April's American Patchwork & Quilting UFO challenge quilt.  I was really ready to give up on this one.  I am not too fond of the colours.  I was making this quilt with civil war type fabrics, but I find it too dirty looking.  I mean, all the colours seem to be washed out or maybe tea dyed is a better analogy.

Anyways, I posted it to the Facebook group and many of them were encouraging.  When I start something, I find that I cannot abandon it, as was suggested by some.  So I am taking the suggestion of one of the commenters, which was to move the blocks closer together and make the quilt smaller.

By making the quilt smaller, this meant that I didn't need to make the last 11 blocks.  I am ok with that!  I think just the knowledge that I don't have to make anymore of those blocks, helped me relax a bit more.

I moved the blocks closer together, rearranged them until I had a layout that I was ok with.  The second part of that person's suggestion was to sash them and call it done.  That is an option, but I had an idea in mind that I wanted to try out with this quilt.  I still want to try it.  If I find I am getting overwhelmed again, I may revert back to the suggestion to just sash them and call it done.

This was part of my idea.  I wanted to use the scraps left over from the blocks, to make a type of frame that goes around each block.  I am not too far ahead and there hasn't been much time wasted so far, but I am still thinking whether it is worth the effort to do it this way.  I haven't decided yet.

I may need to do some more to get the feel of it.  To really see how it will look.  

My brown bear quilt

The push was on, I was still determined to get this done by the end of the month, of March. I managed to get all the rows done, all the sashing, plus the first two borders.  I couldn't do anymore as I didn't have anything for the last border.

By now I am cutting it down to the wire. The last day of March is Saturday, yay!  My thoughts were that I could still manage to do it.  I just have to wake up and run to the quilt store for when it opens, find my border, take it home, wash it, cut it and attach it.  

Well, here it is.  My finished top.  I did wake up and run to the quilt store for when it opens, find my border, take it home, wash it, cut it and I even attached the three sides, before I was interrupted with other "have to do stuff".  So, in the end, even with my push I didn't quite make it, but.....that weekend I did put the last border on.  Now it sits in line to be quilted.

The last border took me a bit longer to attach, because of these extra pieces in the corner.  I wanted to do something more than just plain borders.  It wasn't too bad though.  Just had to do some calculations and remember to add in the seam allowance before I cut.

Here is a picture of my four legged baby, Maddie.  As I sat there looking at her standing on my quilt, I wondered if she might have been my unconscious inspiration for the orange tone sashing and overall feel of the blocks.  Isn't she pretty?

American Patchwork & Quilting UFO challenge for April

This is my April's quilt for the American Patchwork & Quilting UFO challenge.  This is my Farmer's wife quilt.  It is a sampler quilt from the book called The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt.  The book contains samples of 111 different 6" blocks.  

So far I have 24 blocks done with added border around each of them.  I thought I would enjoy making all the various blocks, but I soon found out that I don't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.  I started this quilt in 2012 and did most of what you see here at that time.

  

The blocks were done and there it sat in a state of incompletion.  Eventually I put the blocks away in a time out box.  Some time later, I take them out, thinking I am going to redesign the quilt, so that I can get motivated again.  That's when I came up with the borders to separate the blocks from each other.  I also decided to put them on a diagonal with alternate blocks.  That's why you see them on the wall spread out.

Well........we are now the 8th of April and I feel absolutely no motivation to work on these.  Not even with this challenge.  I wrote as much on the Facebook group for this challenge and got so many suggestions.

Some of the suggestions were to pack them up and give them away to someone who would enjoy doing them, no need to stress over something you do not like anymore.  Others said to drop the design I had in mind and just put the blocks together with sashing and call it done.  There were others who suggested making small things like table toppers, placemats, pot holders, etc.  Just to use them up, practice quilting and call them done.

All good suggestions and there were more.  Everyone putting in their two cents worth.  Everyone trying to help me get my mojo back to complete this quilt, which is my April challenge.

I just don't know what to do.  I feel guilty just getting rid of them and giving them away.  I am a practical girl and wasting is not my thing.  I have been making a lot of small NICU quilts lately and I could use these too, but these colours are so drab, I just can't see covering a baby incubator with them.

So........I leave it on the design wall really hoping that by the end of the month something comes to me.

I will keep you posted.

Finished quilting the forest green squares quilt

It's not much.  It's a simple hunter green squares quilt to give away.  Someone had already made the quilt once, but due to the poor workmanship, I felt I had to remake it, before I could quilt it for charity.  To me, it doesn't matter if the quilt is for friends and family or for charity, I feel for either one we need to put our all into it and do the best work we can.

So here it is done.  It was done just before the New Year, but I still hadn't gotten around to binding it. Now it is bound, labeled and ready to go to someone who will enjoy it and it can possibly provide someone with comfort.

Below is a closer view.  Unfortunately, due to the material colours and the thread colour I used, you can hardly make out the design I quilted.  I can see it better in person.  In the picture you can only really make out some leaves.

I am on a binding binge, trying to get as many of the charity quilts binded, labeled and ready to go out the door.  I am challenging myself to get at least six of them done.  With this one done, I have two completed and four more to go.

Progress on my brown bear paws quilt

As some of you may remember the month of March was my brown bear paw quilt, for the American Patchwork & Quilting UFO challenge.  I was at a stand still for a little while, as I was fairly busy with other things.  So the last week of March I am thinking to myself that I am not going to get this quilt done.  That would be two out of three not finished.  Not good odds.

So, I got down to business and finished making all the blocks.  I enjoy making blocks.  They are small bits and pieces that sew up quickly and you can really see the pile growing fast.  After that I figured, let's keep the momentum going and started putting the rows together.  That was last weekend, the Easter long weekend.

While I was taking a break admiring the rows, while sitting and having a tea, I played around with some quilting ideas and thoughts.  I put down a protector sheet and with a dry erase marker and eraser pad I drew a bunch of different options.  Straight lines, curved lines, a mix of both.  Different ideas for different parts of the block.

In the end, I settled for this one.  There will be some ditch work, some ruler work and some free hand work as well.  I am sticking to mostly curves with just a bit of lines in the background of the block.  What do you think?

I haven't gotten as far as figuring out what I want to do on the blue sashing or the borders, but I figure that will come to me when it comes time to quilt it.