Farmer's Wife: there is progress!

I've been slowly and steadily working away at my FWS and have completed 26 out of 111 blocks.  I'm happy to report that I'm about one-quarter of the way there!


The First 25!

 The 5 blocks pictured above on the lower right side are the most recent:



#18 Century of Progress

 #18 Century of Progress.  Paper pieced using the patterns provided by the the FWS Yahoo group.  After seening how the block was constructed, I decided to eliminate the 2 unnecessary seams on the center pinwheel (see the red fabric).  This was a fun block that came together fairly easily. 



#19 Checkerboard

 #19 Checkerboard.  Even though I sewed this up about a week ago, I had to check my notes on Flickr to remind myself that I had paper pieced this one.  This is a good reason to keep a record or journal while working on quilting projects.



#20 Churn Dash

 #20 Churn Dash.  Wouldn't you know this is a super easy block requiring easy maths, and mine is wonky.




#21 Contrary Wife

 I LOVE the name of this block!  I went a little wild with the background fabrics on this one. Used math and pieced conventionally.




#22 Corn & Beans

 #22 Corn & Beans.  Dang it!  After finishing this one fairly late at night, I noticed I'd flipped a corn triangle with a background triangle.  I couldn't face the ordeal of taking it apart so I'm trying to live with it the way it is.  If it continues to bother me, I'll correct it later.  I've found this is a great way to deal with mistakes - sleep on it and see if you feel the same about it later.  Paperpieced.



#24 Country Path

 #24 Country Path.  I'm kind of in love with the way this one turned out.  I decided I didn't want to deal with PP, so I printed out the templates, cut them out,  glued the paper to some template plastic and cut the plastic out.  I traced the patterns onto the right side of my fabric and cut out the pieces with scissors.  Wouldn't you know, I finally came up with a block that was a tad larger than 6 1/2" because I was careful to sew a scant 1/4" seam.  This is one of my quibbles with paper piecing.  My blocks are coming out a tad smaller than 6 1/2" which means my blocks will be even smaller once I have them squared up.


No doubt someone has a key tip to share about how to get a paper-pieced block with a little extra around the perimeter?


Anyway what I like about this project besides the mini-design/fabric decisions to be made with each block is how I'm exercising my skills as a quilter.  On these 26 blocks, I've used a number of different techniques such as utilizing templates, paper piecing and drafting blocks by hand on graph paper, calculating cutting sizes and last but not least, hand sewing!  

In Process (pieces cut out using templates)

Pieced block...checking it one last time!

Back

Fini!!!