The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt

Hooray!  After 11 months of piecing (on and off, not every day) and 50 hours of quilting (spread over three months), my Farmer’s Wife quilt is finished!

Behold.

Do you know how hard it is to photograph a quilt this big?  Bad wind!

Signature at the bottom.

I.love.

Stats:

128 blocks (111 from The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt book + 17 from Barbara Brackman’s website)

Approximately 93” x 103”

3 boxes of basting pins

50 hours of quilting

39.5 bobbins of quilting thread
Quilted with Juki TL2010Q

Began: January 2012

Completed: July 21, 2014

After marking the entire quilt with Crayola washable markers in varying colors, there were only two blocks with this yellow fabric that didn't get it all out.  And I'm sure a little spot attention will get it all the way out.  There are other blocks with the same fabric that had no issues, and plenty of other blocks with the blue marker.

 I frickin' love the feather border.  It was worth the marking and the work.

To be honest, after all the work, finishing the quilt was a bit anticlimactic.  I just put the last stitch in and put her in the washer.  Weird.  I guess sometimes a mammoth project will do that to you.  It was almost relief that it was done, but I did enjoy almost every part of this quilt.  **It probably doesn’t help that I entered the quilt in our county fair and am considering entering it in the state fair, so I haven’t actually put it on our bed yet.**

Each block is quilted differently.

I loved piecing the top because the blocks were all different – I never got bored.  I loved marking and basting once I finally decided to quilt it myself.  I loved the actual quilting because I couldn’t believe I was actually free motion quilting a queen/king sized quilt on my domestic machine and it looked decent!  And I love that I can look at this quilt on my bed every day as a reminder that I am awesome. 

And that’s not bragging.  The quilting (and even the piecing) is nowhere near perfect, but it is the best I have done to date.  I am going to be proud of that.  I tend to be self-deprecating and uncomfortable with praise, but I think we quilters need to remind ourselves that we have a special craft.  Not everyone can or wants to do this.  We are awesome for making quilts.  

**She won first place in her class at the county fair!  Admittedly there weren't many quilts, but I was proud to get a blue.  Now to decide on entering the state fair.  Possibly submit to a "real" quilt show???**

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Farmer's Wife Update

I have finished all the blocks!  All 127(?) that I needed for my queen/king size quilt.  Here is the bottom corner put together:

I have most of the top already put together, so I just need to finish the triangles on the ends of a few rows and finish joining them.  So excited to finish this top!  Hoping to get it done before bed tonight!

A Sixth Sense

I did a quick run to JoAnn’s the other day, and found some more fabric for Farm Gal’s Folly. I got 7 FQs and a yard of green fabric. The FQs were $0.99; how could I resist? Three of them were not for FGF – two were to save for the Farmer’s Wife Quilt next year because they looked like they could pass for reproduction fabrics, and one for the stash because it was cool. Well, I got home, washed the fabric, and was ironing it dry, and noticed part of a selvage on the Farmer’s Wife fabrics. Lo and behold, they were Sturbridge Village Harvest fabrics! Mwahahahahaha – designer fabrics for $0.99 from JoAnn’s! I was so frickin’ excited, and so proud of my fabric sense.