Monday, February 23, 2015

My Farmer's Wife quilt

Farmers Wife

I can't believe it, but I FINALLY finished the blocks for my Farmer's Wife quilt! I started on this quilt in the summer of 2011.  I made 71 blocks from the book and threw in one of my own.

Farmers Wife

Farmer's Wife templates
Because I'm not a fan of paper piecing, all but two of my blocks were made using templates. For the squares, rectangles, and triangles, I just made notes on the template sizes and used the dimensions to cut the pieces, but I used the laminated templates for all of the angular or oddly sized pieces.

Farmers Wife
Unfortunately, I got a little bitter about this quilt over time. It was a lot of work fiddling with all the templates and cutting for only one block at a time, so in the end, I was desperate to just get it done. 

Farmers Wife
Here it is with all the finished blocks! If you look in the top left corner, there's an airplane in my Farmer's Wife quilt. I decided to put it in for two reasons. One, because I made that block a while back for my husband; I'm not a farmer's wife, but I am a pilot's wife. And two, because the thought of making one more stinkin' block for this quilt made me want to pile it up with some leaves and toss in a lit match.

I still need to add the border, but I was so excited to get the blocks finished that I just had to take a photo and share my excitement that the top is almost finished! I can't decide how wide to make the border or if I want to do just a plain black dot border or incorporate the grey seeds in the border too.

Hopefully, I can muster the discipline to see this thing through to completion before starting something else, but honestly, I kind of doubt it.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Journal Making Video

I've been a journal making fool lately and I made a little video of the process.
It is long, but it's kind of fun to watch if you are into this sort of thing. Enjoy!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Vintage Blocks Jackpot

Vintage Quilt Blocks 4
I feel like I hit the vintage quilt block jackpot with these blocks! I went to a "digger style" estate sale a month or so ago and found 12 of these 17" blocks. This sale was advertised as a "digger" as it was necessary to get down on your knees and dig through tubs and boxes at your own risk. I wish I'd had some gloves, but being without didn't seem to stop me from diving in.

I think they are a version of the Star of Bethlehem block. The prints themselves are not pieced; that's all Y-seams!

Vintage Quilt Blocks 2

Vintage Quilt Blocks 5

Vintage Quilt Blocks 6

They have some water stains on them, but I'm hesitant to wash them for fear of unraveling, distortion, and shrinkage. I guess I could just sew them into a top, quilt and finish it and then wash the whole thing.

Does anyone have any advice? The ivory background is muslin.

Ideas...
*Sash them with muslin or a Kona solid to match one of the solids in the blocks.
* Find enough of a vintage fabric that coordinates and use that for sashing.
* Sew them together as is and add a border with a coordinating solid or vintage print. Maybe a navy polka-dot? They are about 17" and I have 12, so if they finish at 16" (once I square them up), a 3 x 4 layout would make a top 48 x 64" before sashing or borders.

I really want to finish these into a useful quilt. I love the idea of seeing this through for whoever took the time to hand piece all these blocks.

Oh, and I paid $1 each for them. ☺

Handmade Journals

Let's just pretend that I haven't been absent from the blog for eight months.
Just where does the time go?

I've been making handmade journals lately.  I love that it combines two of my favorite things... paper and sewing. The first journal I made after taking Mary Ann Moss' Remains of the Day e-course was for my mother and I gave it to her for her birthday. BTW, Mary Ann's course is fantastic.

The second one I made is mine (below) and I've been using it on occasion to document my days. I uploaded some photos of it to Flickr today,
so I thought I might share them here also.

Closed journal.
ROD Journal #2 (1)

The entire cover.
ROD Journal #2 (17)

ROD Journal #2 (2)
Inside the front cover.

Some pages I've journaled on.
ROD Journal #2 (3)

ROD Journal #2 (4)

ROD Journal #2 (5)

ROD Journal #2 (6)

ROD Journal #2 (7)

ROD Journal #2 (9)

And some of the blank pages in the back. It's not even half full yet.
ROD Journal #2 (13)

ROD Journal #2 (11)

I've probably made a dozen journals so far...
Journal Pages

Collecting vintage papers, books, postcards, and ephemera from estate sales
has become a regular thing for me. I love the hunt!
More journals

The solid red one is a Midori-style leather journal.
I LOVED making it and can't wait to start using it. I bought some beautiful
pieces of leather, so there will be more Midori-style journals in my future.
The open book below I've been using for an inspiration notebook.
Journals

I even sold one in my Etsy shop!  I love the one I sold; I really hope
it's new owner enjoys filling it with her memories and treasures.
handmade smash journal cover

handmade smash journal 4

handmade smash journal 5

So, obviously, I'm hooked. I even dug all my papermaking bins and screens out of the basement so I could make some handmade paper to add to journals. I'm hoping to get some more listed in my Etsy shop soon. There's no way I can use all these myself, but I can't stop making them!

Sorry these photos are so small. I haven't used Flickr much since the new interface was rolled out and I guess I used preview images that were too small. I really don't like the new Flickr format; maybe I'm just resisting change.