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

A Quilty Welcome to 2015

Happy 2015 everyone, and here is my look back at the quilts I finished in 2014.  I was not as prolific as in 2013.  And not NEARLY as productive as 2012!  But since I started "serious" quilting in 2011 with the beginning of my blog, I have made, um, several quilts.  Here's to another quilty year!!

(PS. I included my Swoon quilt in the mosaic twice to fill in a blank spot.  I think it earned it...)

1. Ombre Rainbow Stars Baby Quilt, 2. Apple Autumn Quilt, 3. Minecraft Creeper Quilt, 4. DS Handquilted Swoon Quilt, 5. Origins Quilt, 6. S'more Love Camper Quilt, 7. Lush Uptown Quilt, 8. Baby Boy Plus Quilt, 9. S'More Love Baby Quilt, 10. Scattered Flowers Postage Stamp Baby Quilt, 11. Half Square Triangle Quilt, 12. Sister's Paint Box Quilt, 13. Sunshine and Showers Baby Quilt, 14. Christmas Table Runner, 15. Hand Quilted Swoon Quilt

Rainbow Stars Baby Quilt

Just popping in to share a little baby quilt that I just had to make.  I wanted some pretty stars to quilt and I had: 

1. A sweet little charm pack of Kona cottons in a "Sunrise" colorstory...
2. Yardage of a fun and colourful print called "Birds of Norway" by Michael Miller which seemed to pick out lots of the shades in my little charm pack...
3. Just enough Kona Oyster solid...
4. And a drawerful of colourful perle and Aurifil threads to play with.

I used a tutorial found here but I did have to do some reducing as it calls for 5.5" squares as the centres of the stars and I used a 5" charm pack.  But it was very easy and this block is very forgiving as your points "float" and probably won't get cut off when you sew it to the other blocks, unless you do something very weird.

Then, as you can see, I hand quilted around each star and then machine quilted around each star.  I bound it with Kona Cerise (cut to 2" - my new normal) and it was done!

Apple Autumn Quilt

For this pattern, I was inspired by Camille Roskelley's quilt "Coming Home" in her book Simplify - which I also used here, but with smaller corner pieces. The quilt is quite simply 5 inch charms with 2.25 inch white squares sewn to the corners. I just started pulling fabrics from my stash and was thrilled when I had everything I needed to finish this quilt in a weekend and get it to its recipient, a dear person in need of some comfort, as soon as I could. I even had backing (half of an Ikea duvet cover)! I never have backing!

Anyways, it finished at 56" by 65", it's quilted in an allover meander on my machine with Aurifil colour 2325 50 wt thread. I experimented with cutting my binding strips at 2" this time rather than 2.25" as I usually do. I love it! The binding is exactly the same width on both sides of the quilt! I will be doing the same from now on. I happen to be partial to a wood grain binding, not sure why, but I have bound about 5 quilts now with wood grain prints.

 Isn't it a great colour palette? My son helped me out and named it "Apple Autumn". I was thinking something like "Indian Summer" but I think "Apple Autumn" is just the right kind of juicy and sweet name.

 Ok, off to stitch a label and make a quilt delivery...

Happy, Happy, Happy!

I received an email this afternoon from Amy Ellis at Amy's Creative Side, host of the Blogger's Quilt Festival!  My quilt was a winner in the Hand Quilted Category! Hooray! Thanks to any of my friends and blog followers out there who cast their little vote for me.

It was such a lovely surprise to come home to after a little getaway celebrating 20 years of marriage to my handsome fella. Our anniversary was on November 6.  Here we are on our 2 day date to Banff.