Dragon Rambles

Yesterday was again the day for sitting down to some fun of picking out colours and making two Farmer’s Wife blocks.

First up, buzzard’s roost.

Then, calico puzzle.

Putting me at 15 blocks.

The photos aren’t too great as it was back to work for me today (booooo!), so I needed to use artificial light when I got home. I should have taken the pic yesterday when I finished them, but I wanted to pick up my knitting and continue watching season 3 Castle episodes instead

Yesterday was Farmer’s Wife day again, so I got to give my needle calluses a work out. Yes, you can get a callus from hand sewing. If you do a lot, and I’ve definitely done a lot of it these holidays.

First up we have block 13, buckwheat.

And the second block for the week was butterfly at the cross roads, block 14.

That makes 13 blocks done now, with 98 to go. No photo of them together this week, will post one next week when 15 have been completed.

Sunday’s FWQ blocks were all “broken”, so I guess it made sense that they each had a few pieces to them.

First was broken dishes. I decided I hadn’t used enough green, so green was up.

Next was broken sugar bowl.

And here are my first 11 blocks, leaving a nice even 100 to go.

I’ve been in bed feeling pretty ordinary these last few days, so I’ve not made much progress this week on my craft projects. But I did get two more star blocks finished on Moonglow beforehand.

Here’s block 7…

And block 8.

This leaves just 3 months of this block of the month pattern to go. But 5 blocks since two of those months need two blocks each. The photos are still not showing the vibrancy of this fabric but maybe I’ll get a decent shot or two by the time I’m done.

Today is Farmer’s Wife day. I’m still feeling shady but sick of my bed, and with it looking like it’ll be a nice rainy day, a day settling in to piece blocks and “watch” dvds sounds just the thing.

About 10 days ago I shared my happy dance of finishing all 12 blocks of month 12 of Moonglow. Well, since then I’ve been steadily stitching away to complete some of the stars.

When I first bought this kit back in 2002, I started from month 1 and completed almost 3 blocks before this project was put on hold.

Last year when I picked this project back up again, I took a good look at these blocks and decided to redo them if I had enough fabric. I cut out all the fabric for the blocks (except the black background) and discovered I had heaps, so this project was completely started from scratch.

Here’s the new block 1…

Block 2…

And block 3.

Then I got to start on new ones. Here’s block 4…

Block 5…

And block 6.

The light was wierd today so would only give me washed out colours, to remind you of their vibrancy, here’s those first 12 blocks again.

Two things I have learnt while working on these…
1. I suck at joining 8 points. I really need to practice that.
2. I’m glad I ordered this kit years ago while all of the original colours were available. I’ve seen the options for the 10th anniversary pattern and I’m not such a fan.

Yesterday was the fifth week of the FWQ. Two quick and easy blocks this week.

Block 9: Box

Block 10: Bowtie

And the story so far.

9 down, 102 to go. So in 51 weeks, at the current pace, I’ll be ready to start putting the top together

Another two blocks of the FWQ yesterday. First up, Birds in the air. The points aren’t perfect but I’m happy enough with it.

And one that was much quicker to piece, Bouquet.

And my collection so far…

I’ve now finished all of the easiest blocks of Moonglow, now I get to move onto the stars and an increasing number of points joining. All the fabric is cut out for all if the remaining blocks (I did that last year when I restarted), so there’s no hold up on piecing the next blocks.

For now, here’s my block 12 happy dance – all 12 done. I found my usual photo spot occupied when I went to take the photo.

So I had to improvise.

Today was the third week of the Farmer’s wife QAL that I’m doing with Nicki. Today, it seems I went for a blue theme.

The first block: bat wings (block 5)

It went together nice and quickly. Which is good, because the next one didn’t. Not because it was difficult, but because I just wasn’t paying attention to what I should have been doing and instead started putting together a totally random block.

First I cut 12 each of the template, instead of 8. How? Because it was template number 12, so obviously that was how many pieces I needed. Then, I pieced them together along the diagonal as if I were making half square triangles.

So after I had piece together 12 of those squares, I went to put together the final block and realised what I’d done. Oops. I got there eventually, so here’s block 6 (Big Dipper).

And here’s all 5 of the blocks I’ve done so far. The colours are more true in this photo than they were in the previous ones.

Well, the plan to stick to one block a week for the Farmer’s Wife quilt didn’t last long. After my block last week I was soooo tempted to do another,but restrained myself. Nicki had the same problem. So we’ve decided we’ll probably do two a week, with consultation with each other each week to decide if we’ll do the second block. This week was a 2 block week, but we decided to skip block 3 with the applique for now.

First block: Autumn Tints…

Second block is Basket Weave. But I rearranged the placement of the block after a fellow blogger mentioned that the original placement looked a lot like a swastika. Snap! I couldn’t see anything else. So here’s my arrangement…

Much better

I’m really loving my colour palette (which unfortunately I’m still having trouble photographing), but I’m not loving the fabric. I think it’s meant for machine sewing as I can only really do a stitch at a time or I have great difficulty pushing the needle through. This is really highlighted when I move back to this project from Moonglow, which uses all Jinny Beyer fabric – beautiful to hand sew with, since Jinny only hand sews her quilts. But I can handle the fabric since I’m not working with it for too long at a time.

Now I’m adding a new feature into my weekly post. I got this idea from this post. I love it! So, for as long as my creativity holds out, I will be writing an alternate letter each week. Today’s is the alternate letter for the one that accompanies the Basket Weave block. Here goes.

“Do I want my daughter to marry a farmer? I should ask her:
First, do you want to get married?
Second, do you want children?
Third, do you have strength, courage and ambition enough to make your own home?
I wish for my daughter to be a strong individual, to make her own way in the world, wherever (and doing whatever) that may be. I want her to stretch her self, and continue to grow as a person through all media, including music, books, debates and current events. I don’t want her to fall into a rut but to continually ask herself, ‘What next?’”