Mostly about the Farmer's Wife.

I cut up the 5" squares to put in the zippered bag I made for my give away to celebrate reaching and exceeding 100 followers. If you have not yet entered, please do so by going here. I will be drawing tomorrow night.



I have been working on the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt. This block is Rainbow Flowers, #73.  A lovely 1/4 log cabin block. I pieced it as a log cabin block, not as illustrated in the book.



This is Autumn Tints, #2. I was not really considering autumn when I picked the colours.



This is Squash Blossom, #86 (which I posted earlier). It is less striking turned on pointe, I think, but still a great block.



Here is Windmill, #108. I love the simplicity of this block.



These are my 18 blocks so far. I am still loving making these small blocks, each one teaches me something, not always what I expect to learn.

You may want to visit  the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt QAL to check everyone's progress. I am off to do some gardening and then back to plum jam making. I hope you enjoy your Sunday!

Best,

Leanne

Thank you for being a friend.

I had some small bits left over from making my DQS11 mini quilt so I made this zippered bag. The sort-of-wonky nine patches have tiny 1/2" squares. It is has a bright lining. It could be yours.



To celebrate reaching and exceeding 100 followers of this blog, I am giving away a couple of things. First, a fat quarter pack of some of my favourite fabrics, Shades of Grey designed by Daisy Janie. It is organic fabric and it is wonderful to work with. I used it in the Big Little George wall quilt I made this spring.

Pink Chalk Fabrics have agreed to help me to avoid a huge shipping delay (from them in the USA to me in Canada to you wherever that may be) for this bundle I have purchased, and instead they will ship it directly to the winner.

I am also sending you the zippered bag. And I am going to cut up some some charm squares cut from my bright fabric stack to put inside. You have seen these fabrics in all my projects in the last two months, the modern crosses quilt, the farmer's wife blocks, the We can do it! Skill Builder Sampler blocks, my doll quilt swap quilt and this zippered bag. These bright colours are a treat to work with, maybe they will inspire you too. And they look great with the Shades of Grey!

To win, just leave me a comment, no hoops or obligations, although if you are not a follower I would love it if you became one. In your comment, let me know what you are quilting right now, what you excited about quilting next and/or what you had fun quilting over the last year. I will make the draw on Monday night and post the winner on Tuesday, August 16, 2011. (Please make sure I can reach you, if you are a no-reply blogger then put your email in the comment.)

This celebration is to thank you for being a friend. I really do appreciate the support, guidance and friendship the followers of my blog give to me. You inspire me and make me laugh. And I am still surprised to have over 100 followers!

By the way, today is also a blog-versary of sorts, this blog started on March 12, 2011, 5 months ago today.

Best,

Leanne

ps, I am still making plum jam, I have made 5 batches so far, more tonight. Too bad it is so hard to ship or I could give some of it away too.

Lazy days of summer - WIP Wednesday

This block is called Arizona. It is the last of the hst blocks in the We can do it! Skill Builder Sampler QAL hosted by Leila at Sewn.



I am now caught up to the group. Next up are three weeks of flying geese skill building blocks. I really like flying geese but have virtually no skills making them so this should help.



This is Squash Blossom, Block #86 from the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt. The flickr group for the FWQAL is here.

Isn't that a lovely little block! Don't look too closely, it is far from perfect even though it is paper pieced. But it took about 5 hours to make! That is far more than it should have taken. I made every single paper piecing mistake you can articulate, over and over again. And then again for good measure.

I love the results of paper piecing, I love the "magic" of it, and it is kind of fun sometimes. But it is the least intuitive thing I have done in a long time. My brain just will not accept any part of it as logical or reasonable so I need to practice and practice.

I will get another FW block done soon and then post the updated group of my blocks. I am slowly catching up with other projects, but for now, this is my progress. That and making plum jam, and making more jam and handing out plums to everyone who will take them. Soon there will be blackberries, and jelly... Oh, and I have almost figured out how to celebrate 100 and more followers, stay tuned for more on that, probably on Friday.

I am linking to WIP Wednesday hosted by Lee at Freshly Pieced. I hope you will visit all the projects, I try to view everything as it is all so inspiring, although I have to admit to not finishing all of them last week, it is hard to keep up in the summer.



Best,

Leanne

Sunday night.

This weekend I made a couple more of the We can do it! Skill Builder Sampler QAL Blocks.



These are pinwheels. I always find pinwheels harder than I expect. There are a lot of seams meeting in the middle and it is easy to get things out of line (like the green pinwheel). But pinwheels always make me smile.



This block is four bow ties blocks put together. I am pretty confident of my skills with this one. I love the octagon in the middle. I have one block to go and I will be caught up to the QAL. The upcoming skills are far less familiar to me and I am looking forward to Leila's excellent instruction.



But much of my weekend was spent being a plum farmer. I have two different kinds of plums ripening now. These small ones are pretty bland eating when fresh so I thought I would try some jam.



It looks nice. This is part of the batch, 8 cups of plums make 7.5 cups of jam. I had to process it twice , and be rescued by my friend, the jam-making angel, but it worked in the end. I added cinnamon, cardamon, fresh ginger and vanilla, after consulting the family cooking expert about how to jazz it up. Turns out, it tastes like apple pie.



This is a small corner of the tree.  I think I have about 40 batches of jam to go unless maybe the neighbours love these plums fresh more than we do. I am going to try a bunch of different spice combinations, but the next batch is going to be just plums to see how that tastes.



This tree is full of excellent eating peach-plums. We are all stuffed, the neighbours are stuffed and some are in the fridge, with a lot more on the tree still. We put up danger tape and put garden furniture under the tree to keep away the deer. As I said, plum farmer.

So on Friday I mentioned that this blog was at 99 followers and a whole bunch more people joined in.  Thank you for the support. I am hoping to put together a prize for you to celebrate in the next day or two. I had thought it would take a bit longer to hit the 100 mark and that I had more time to decide what to do.

Best,

Leanne

decisions, decisions

Last night I suddenly realized how to quilt the doll quilt that I am making for DQS11. It is interesting to me that this quilting, which emphasizes the Irish Chain diagonals, makes it so much harder to "see" the nine patches which were so obvious before.



I have been trying to make this a close to scale mini bed quilt, and I was having a lot of trouble imagining a quilting approach that would seem realistic and proportionate in size to what might be done on a full size quilt. I think this works nicely.

I am still trying to decide on the binding, and everyone gave me lots of ideas last week. I'll keep you posted.

By the way, I see there are 99 followers of this blog, which is very flattering and fun. I am trying to decide what I might give away to celebrate when the number reaches 100. Any ideas of what you might like?

Enjoy your Friday, it is a beautiful day here.

Best,

Leanne