I Am a Farmer's Wife

There was some talk about doing a quilt along based on the book The Farmer's Wife by Laurie Aaron Hird. It started with Amanda and Angela over on Twitter and it grew, exponentially, from there. As of right now there are 368 members signed up on the flickr group.

I had seen the Farmer's Wife book before and I knew immediately that this was a project I could get on board with. It was only 2 blocks per week, so not too overwhelming. AND it would challenge me to try techniques and make blocks I would never have tried on my own. I was the 5th person to sign up in the flickr group, and I ordered my book right away. Unfortunately, I was so excited about the great price I found for the book that I ordered it before I realized it was coming from the UK and it would take 2 weeks to get to me!

The book finally arrived two days ago and I was anxious to get started on my blocks.

My printer is on the fritz at the moment so I loaded up the kiddos and took my book down to Kinko's to print out the templates so I could get started. To be honest, I was rather unhappy with this part of my experience. I knew there would be quite a few templates. I mean, I am making 111 blocks, but when the guy told me it printed 130 pages, I was like "WHAAAAAAAT?!?!?!" Seriously. Every single template (even the 1.5 inch square) is printed on it's very own piece of paper *. Many of the templates are not even necessary. I mean, do I really need a template to cut a 3" x 1.5" rectangle? Not really. No measurements are given in the book however, which makes every template required unless you are good at quilter math - and I am not. I kept thinking there is no possible way that the author of this book was an actual farmer's wife, for they would never be so wasteful. I thought for sure that I was so turned of by this lack of concern for the welfare of trees that I would be angry the entire year it would take me to make this quilt. Until I made my first block...

The fabric I chose for my blocks is Hope Valley by Denyse Schmidt. I decided to suck up my frustration and start cutting. I had 3 weeks of catching up to do so I had 6 blocks to make.

After I had my first block sewn together, I was over the bad feelings I had regarding this book. It was so pretty that I just couldn't be mad anymore. It took me 2 days to complete my first 6 blocks, and I couldn't be happier with how they're turning out.

 Block 1

 Block 2

 Block 3

 Block 4

 Block 5

 Block 6

I decided to make the king-sized version of the quilt, which will bump me up to 145 blocks. I plan to use it for my own bed and think I may even splurge a bit to have it professionally quilted by a longarm quilter.

* I did find out later that there are places online that you can print out the templates using FAR less paper. It doesn't do me any good now, but hopefully others will know about this and save some money, and trees.

Selina