Farmer's Wife Quilt Along-Week 8

I messed up last week I think and posted about my week 6 blocks with my week 7 blocks.  Blah!  Whatever.  I now have 16 blocks.  And here they are...

Block #11 Broken Dishes

Block #12 Broken Sugar Bowl

I was a Farmer's Wife this week.  Yesterday I waded down the ditch pulling out some bad weeds on each side.  I came out covered in grass seeds, splotted with mud, red faced and sweaty.  I then slogged wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of weeds to the tip pile not the compost.  I don't know if I was more worried about the potential critters I could encounter in the ditch or more worried about not being able to get out of the ditch once I was in it.  It all ended well.

On a happier note, we actually picked our first raspberries this morning.  The water is still so high because of all the rain that I got the ditch side of the patch.  Husband would not promise not to laugh if I fell in and asked if I would kindly time my fall so that he could fetch the camera first.  Luckily, I did not fall in and we were rewarded with a small bowl of red raspberry lovelies.

Who spilled the bucket of crayons? A quilt finish...

I am calling this quilt "Who spilled the bucket of crayons?"  It is an explosion of colour.  It is a scrap quilt and I have been working on it for many months but I put on a big push just lately for 2 reasons.  Number 1, it is part of my must finish list for the Finish it up Challenge sponsored by Meg.  Number 2, it is summer and I am on holidays and have so much more quilting time.  I did get quite bored with staring at my box of scraps and sewing endless strips to squares of loose leaf paper.  The other depressing fact of sewing with scraps is that despite making 80 paper pieced string blocks, the stinking box of scraps does not seem that diminished.  How does that happen?????  I am over the moon with the result now that it is all finished.  I really am tickled with visiting the bits of all the quilts I have made over the past year in this scrappy quilt.  I was showing it off to a friend yesterday and she was looking for her quilt.  She found it.  She looked for Daughter's sunflower quilt.  Found it. I see my mum's quilt and on and on.  That makes it fun. I spy, quilting style.

The quilt is backed with a 100% cotton vintage sheet.  This is in the spirit of the scrappy quilt and not buying anything but the batting.  I bound the quilt in leftovers from Daughter's purple Christmas gift quilt along with another bit of purple in my stash.  I had to make the binding a bit scrappy because I was a bit short with the leftover purple. My quilt advisor, aka Husband, suggested purple for the binding.  He has great colour sense and I probably would not have gone in that direction but it totally works. I quilted straight lines on either side of the blocks.  The back shows the square grid that formed.  It is a big quilt.  64" x 84".  And it is finished! It will be a quilt for us and will warm a number of people when visiting or watching TV.  It feels really great to say this is a finish.

A big giant Happy Birthday to Daughter who is now 22!!!!!  Love you, Bug!


And I will be linking up to Sew Modern Monday and tomorrow, to Fabric Story Tuesday!  Check out the other quilty fun!

    

quilting and binding...and a magic bag

Yesterday I quilted my string quilt.  Then I made the binding, pinned the binding, sewed the binding to the quilt and hand sewed the binding.  Done.  Then I got out the magic bag and warmed it up because this quilt was such a big quilt by the time I finished with the quilting, I was a bit of a wreck.  What a workout!  But it is done and will be ready for the big unveiling tomorrow.

On the sewing front today?  I took it easy.  Husband and I went on a bit of an adventure to get some new chickens.  They are quite lovely.  7 sweet little 2 month old girlies.  More on that later.  The only quilting accomplished today was the choosing of colours for my next Farmer's Wife blocks.  After finishing the string quilt, I can now attest to the fact that you can put a whole mess of colours together in chaotic randomness and it still comes out looking like it was made to be and all on purpose.  With this in mind, I will try to relax when choosing the scraps to make my little blocks because in the end, it will all look like it should.

On the farming front, the raspberries are finally starting to ripen and we will most likely be picking the first batch by Tuesday. While our blueberries are not ready we did notice that farms at a lower elevation have blueberries starting to look blue.  There is hope.  We are easily 2 weeks late this season.  Yoiks. We are currently wealthy in  broccoli and parsley.  Right now it is a competition.  Who will win?  The ability of Husband to keep up with the tabouli making and thus the parsley crop or will the parsley win?  I have my money on the parsley!

And I leave you with a lovely photo of my magic bag.  : ) Happy Sunday!

Flea Market Finds on a Saturday...

I am a little ahead of the game this week but here they are anyway...my flea market finds!

For a mere  50 cents!  Julia Child's incredible Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  I actually already have a copy but for 50 cents, I could not leave this one behind!

And to go along with it, from awhile ago, a copy of Julie and Julia!

A brand new 16 x 16" pillow form for $1.99.  Thank you Value Village!

Several metres of lovely cotton fabric.  Love the yellow pin dots!

And not to be forgotten, what would a weekend of Flea Market Finds be without more vintage sheets in some really great colours and prints!

...a few pillow cases too.  The yellow ones are HUGE!  They must be super king size as I have never seen such long pillow cases.  I suggested they are a child's Halloween dream pillow case as you could get soooooo much candy in those suckers!  But they would either have to be a tall child or drag them on the ground!

And that's it.  The story of my week in thrift stores. I am linking up with Sophie's Flea Market Finds. Stop to check out the other fabulous finds of the week!

FLEA MARKET FINDS

Finish it up Challenge- Week 4 check in

Scrappy Paper Pieced String Quilt Top

Well.  Let's see.  I did have a quilt finish this week but it was not on my official list but I added it on and also added the Farmer's Wife Quilt Along!  I finished the blue vintage sheet quilt and I am up to date on the Famer's Wife with 14 blocks completed.  And as you can see above, I have completed the top for the string quilt, made entirely of scraps.  I am relieved that this is to this point because I was seriously tired of making these blocks and staring at scraps in a box.  I am planning to get this sandwiched and quilted in the next few days.  I will be most delighted to strike this one off the list!

My work in progress list includes...

1) Paper pieced scrappy string quilt  (now a quilt top!)

2)  Clovers or Card Tricks quilt

3)  Sparkling Cider Vintage Sheet Quilt

4)  Fresh Flowers Quilt (only just cut out!!!)   Now a quilt top!

5)  A hexie pillow cover

add ons to the list...

6) Vintage sheet quilt in blue

7) Farmer's Wife Quilt Along  (week 7-14 blocks finished and up to date)

Farmer's Wife Week 7

Blue vintage sheet quilt

So all in all, a good week!  Check out all the other finish ups over at Meg's and have a super weekend!

Did someone say rain?

Good grief!  It has poured today.  Never mind that, the Fraser River is at flood stage which is most strange for this time of year but it has been a strange year.  What does one do when it pours?  I spent the day in what Husband is referring to as my quilting catacombs.  Yes, I quilt downstairs but it is far from catacomb-like!  So HUGE progress today.  I completed all 80!  Yes, all 80 paper pieced scrappy string blocks.  Wahoo!  I am really sick of making them .  It will be a frosty Friday before I decide to make another one of these projects.  If I start one, somebody slap me!  The crazy thing is that the scrap box (which I just happened to notice, used to contain Tequila, and came to me from my mother's house.  What?)  does not seem to have diminished at all in scrap contents.  It still appears full and yet I have just made enough blocks for an 80" x 100" quilt!!!!!

 This box of scraps became...

 These messy blocks that are waiting to be pressed and trimmed.

 And created tiny little trimming scraps... what to do with these now?

And finally a stack of 80 blocks!!!!

Farmer's Wife Quilt-Along Week 6

 Block #7 Birds in the Air

 Block #61 Northern Lights

 Block #19 Checkerboard

Block # 71 Puss in the Corner

 Block # 21 Contrary Wife

 Box #9 Box

Playing nicely together

It makes such a difference to the speed at which I get things done now that I am on holidays!  I was quite behind with my blocks for this snazzy quilt along but I may even be a bit ahead of the game now with 14 blocks.  This is officially my 6 week post and I tackled some blocks with itty bitty little pieces. Yoiks!  The #7 Block, Birds in the Air took me a long time!  Seriously finicky but I felt very mature as I had been avoiding blocks with this many pieces.  When you see that you need to cut out 24 little triangles in one colour and 12 of another, you tend to run away screaming. Or at least I do! I continue to use bits and pieces of fabric and scraps of this and that.  Picked up a couple of fun scrap bags yesterday at the quilt shop over the way and that added some fun to the blocks.  I am using some of my fabulous thrift store Flea Market Fancy in a few of the blocks.  I have also uploaded some pictures to Flickr for the very first time for the quilt along!  Happy Wednesday!