Farmer's Wife Quilt

Hey everybody!! I finished the Farmer's Wife Quilt this past week!  Here it is in all its giganticness in my driveway, being held up in -20 degree weather by my husband (6 feet, 1 inch tall) and my 19 year old son (6 feet, 3 inches tall) and standing on blocks of wood.

This quilt was conceived in 2011 while on a trip with my sister to Seattle. We stopped in a quilt shop, we stopped in a book shop and I found a jelly roll of Kansas Troubles Perennials and a copy of The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt. The colours are my mom's style and I was itching to try the sampler quilt - so it made a great reason to get started on a quilt for her. Obviously. And much more fabric than a jelly roll later, plus a few years, here we are!

I managed to quilt this behemoth on my little home machine (which has quite a small throat space) by doing it in two, separate horizontal parts. I joined the top pieces then sewed the backing together by hand and carefully quilted over the area right down the middle.

Astonishingly, I didn't get any puckers - which means that I must have been helped by a quilting fairy. (I was totally prepared for failure as events leading up to this quilting were decidedly not smooth. I reversed the direction of the two pieces, which meant that I quilted right to the edge of the WRONG edge on one piece. Which meant I had to pick out the quilting in about a two dozen different spots, re-quilt farther back from the edge, which meant I had to bury threads on the starting and stopping spots of the re-quilted sections - about 2 dozen sections as I said - and then go back to the side I left un-quilted along the edge and quilt that section. ALSO, while pressing a fold in the cream muslin backing to prepare it for hand stitching the pieces together after the quilting was done and the top was joined... I scorched it brown with my iron!! It was right smack dab in the centre where one might not ever see it, but I still needed to fix it and ended up making a 3" by 4" patch that I hand stitched over top of the scorched area, and then requilted over.)

Anyways, I am VERY pleased with how it turned out. And so is my Mom! And my Dad even picked up the Farmer's Wife Sampler book and looked at it while I was stitching down the binding over New Year's at our house and we chatted about quilts and quilt history and how they are made. So that was fun!  When can I start another one??

QUILT STATS:

Pattern: Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt

Fabric: Various lines from Kansas Troubles by Moda

Thread: Aurifil 50 wt in 2325 for piecing and quilting the top (2021 in the bobbin for quilting)

Backing: Kona Premium Muslin in Natural

Batting: Quilter's Dream Blend

Size: King