The Farmer's Wife block addition continues.....

You could say that I obviously haven't had enough to do at this time of year when everyone else is rushing around preparing for the silly season!! My excuse is that is it really my fault that I haven't had much proper work and also had such a bad cold and cough that for a few days or so (!) all I really felt fit for was sewing and whatever silly film was on C5 in the afternoon.

So I have been amusing myself doing variations of the blocks we have already been given in class. I think I am up to about 42 blocks now, so there is definitely another monster in the making. Part of the inspiration is that Graham has taken to wanting to choose colour combinations with me. That means that I end up with blocks that I probably would not have chosen myself but it seems that the beauty of these little blocks is that none of them is so different that you can't find a home for it amongst the whole collection. I am also constantly surprised at how different the blocks look with some simple variations.

So here they are:

 

Notice that there is only one each of Geese and Corn and Beans - those are blocks that I won't be replicating!!

I found a block called Card Tricks which I liked because it has a 3D effect until I realised just how many triangles and squares it took. Then I found a simpler version of it called Card Games in an older book by Janet Kime called Quilts To Share that I discovered through Silve. This time the pattern needed scaling down but then, I realised that FW template 4 (a little square) was just the right size for the squares and all I needed to do was double it for the rectangles and half it for the triangles. The corner triangles I created as I needed them and then ..... a bit later ..... spotty Card Games was born!

 

I really like this one ... I suspect it will spawn some lookalikes in due course. In the meantime I have found some more inspiration from a traditional quilt referred to in one of the US blogs I follow. I have captured pictures of half a dozen of the blocks that look at though they will fit into the Farmer's Wife universe - and using the same templates. So in due course, off I will go again.................!!

Happy sewing!!

A finished project for a friend's January birthday

Way back in the summer my long time and lovely friend, Amanda, showed us the feature wallpaper in their newly decorated bedroom.

Called 'Cherry Blossom' by the PIP Design Studio, she had fallen in love with it before she realised how difficult it was going to be to tone with bedclothes and soft furnishings. We stood looking at a blank space on the wall above a chest of drawers that just cried out to have 'something'. We talked about how some small pieces of the paper could be framed and then I said, 'Give me a piece of the paper and we'll see......'

Move on to our trip to stay in Bromyard and I spent a good hour and more with the brilliant Ruth Doughty of Doughty's of Hereford, who helped me match/tone both the gold/yellow and the two shades of each of pink, blue and green that appear in the pattern. 

I looked at all the patterns I had for inspiration and decided that Checkerboard (Farmer's Wife) didn't look too complicated - little did I know that Debs would later classify it as one of the 'fiendish' blocks when we started the class. But Debs scaled the original up for me to a 12" block, which was still fiddly but more manageable and the result turned out to be quite pleasing. 

Graham, who is becoming a willing supporter of my patchwork addiction, took the patterns of the garland, butterfly and two sizes of flower and made me cardboard quilting templates and I hand quilted the surface all over randomly with the different patterns using variegated shades of Perle Cotton in pink, blue green and yellow. You'll probably need to enlarge the picture to see the quilt detail.

After a bit of discussion with those of my buddies who know better than me, I put a sleeve on the back through which a dowel rod will go in due course and after a bit of debate I hand wrote a label using a permanent pen in my usual trademark Mrs Everything a Little Bit Wonky Style!

Amanda's birthday isn't actually until the end of the month but I do hope she will like the finished hanging. She does know that there is 'something' in the pipeline because she caught me looking at the blank wall in the bedroom during one visit when I had supposedly gone up to use the bathroom!!

Happy sewing!!

Sue D's Christmas Quilts

Sue has finished a couple of projects prior to Christmas.

Note the hand quilted detail....

Also important news that Sue has finished her Simple Sampler quilt. Last week she came round to Towse's house - Carolyn joined us briefly - and in the spirit of the old time quilting bees we had a joint bind, fold, pin and slipstitch session and Hurrah, there it was done. I hope that Sue will share a photo with the blog in due course.

Happy sewing and compliments of the season!