A life in lists

Not a fwqal update. Well, not of my blocks anyway

Possibly my favourite block so far, made by Kerry. Not entirely sure why, just rather liking the colour combo and snippets of text.

I've actually completed a couple of blocks over the past week, and even managed to bring them with me to my mother's to photograph. But forgot the crucial photographing aspect. I've been partly distracted by being 'on holiday' (hey, we're poor. Coming to visit parents counts as a holiday), and very much distracted by keeping up with the horrific events going on around the UK at the moment. I know I'm far from alone in feeling absolutely sickened by the violence, looting and rioting that seems to be spreading across the country this week. The ugly side of the UK is well and truly on show, and I sincerely hope that it is quelled quickly and that the positivity of those helping to clear up and help those in distress somehow manages to beat the greedy thugs who are the cause of these problems.

Hard as it is to ignore what's going on, I'm sticking to less gloomy and, frankly, more superficial matters for today. Like quilt blocks.

Love the scrappiness (in a good way!) of these blocks by Twin Fibers.

I'm really hoping that I get a chance to make some headway on my fwqal blocks over the next couple of weeks. I'm concentrating on my list for this month, but still trying to squeeze in the odd block where I can. Heck, I need to catch up again!

Lynne's blocks are just amazing, such a great use of vibrant colours.

I am really enjoing this quilt along, which is now up to over 800 members! I guess the quilting community was ready for a sampler. I'm manfully resisting a slew of other sampler books including the Farmer's Wife Pony Club Sampler Quilt, also by Laurie Aaron Hird, which looks fantastic. Post wedding penny-pinching is, thankfully, keeping a firm lid on my spending for now.

The only monochromatic quilt-in-progress I've come across in the group. Love the way it allows every block design to stand out.

I hope to have some blocks of my own to share with you next week!

FWQAL week 10 (I think)

I was hoping to get a few more blocks knocked out this week, but the weather was so glorious that pretty much all daylight hours have been spent outside. I'm happy with the one (ahem) block that I did manage this week though (the other block was completed a few weeks back, but never got properly blogged).

Incidentally, I've been playing around with the idea of, each week, making a mosaic of other QAL members' versions of the blocks I've made. I find it fascinating how different fabric choices affect the look of a block. Is that something that people might find interesting? Or just a big fat waste of time? If anyone's interested I'll do a couple of catch up posts with mosaics of other versions of the blocks I've completed so far.

On to the block notes...

Block 12 - Broken Sugar Bowl

• The yellow is a fabric left over from my sunshine quilt, the grey is from the Sherbert Pips line by Moda.
• This block is a lot nicer in real life - that yellow is far paler and less acid. Not quite sure what happened with my photography there.
• I'm pretty pleased with this block - most of my points match, and I like having the white somwhere other than the background.

Block 13 - Buckwheat 

•  The darer grey is a random geometric Aztec type print, the mid grey is that Sherbert pips one again, and the lightest grey is a text fabric. Again, no selvege.
• I really wasn't struck by this block in the book, so I tried to alter the fabrics as uch as possible - I swapped the values around and made it monochromatic.
• It's still not my absolute favourite block in the world, but I like it a lot more than I was expecting.
• Oh, and I took extra care over my template and fabric cutting, and it really paid off - all the points match up pretty well.

Back to the farm

 

I have missed my little farmer's wife blocks! I was hoping to be able to make a few in the week before the wedding, but in the least surprising turn of evets ever, I was a little bit busy with wedding preparations. Now that the dust is beginning to settle a bit (and the house no longer resembles a charity shop/props department hybrid), I'm looking forward to churning out plenty more of these. I did manage that one up there at some point, but I figure I'll save the block notes for next week's update, since it's all alone.

Of course, there's still the non-sleeping baby to contend with before I can sew very much (seriously. Perfectly happy on about 10 hours' sleep in 24. Ridiculous), but I had that before and still managed a respectable output. But he's rather lovely, so we'll forgive him (a bit).

Apologies for blurry iPhone shot, there wasn't much in the way of choice of recent pictures of him. Apparently I don't photogrph Jasper a lot. And do you see those sunflowers? The last survivors of the wedding flowers. We're enjoying the brightness they bring before consigning them to the compost. Also, I look really sinister. Sorry about that.

FWQAL, week 4. A week of several blocks

This week's roundup contains, I think, my favourite block yet - birds in the air (top middle). Construction was a bit of a pain, but I think the final block is pretty striking.

I had a fun week, fitting a bit of block construction in when I could. I didn't realise I'd managed five blocks (actually six, but it was too dark to photograph the last one and add it to this post, so it can go in next week's round up) until I started to write this post.

I noticed that a couple of the participants in the quilt along group have started discussing final layouts, which I'm keeping a close eye on -I just can't quite decide how I feel about a traditional sashing/cornerstone design. Hopefully the solution to that will present itself once I have enough blocks to play around with.

Anyway, block notes...

Block 7 - Birds in the Air

•  The charcoal is a sort of aztec tiling style fabric, my bit has no selvege, so it remains nameless. The birds are from Cloud9's My Happy Nursery range
• I love this block. OK, so most of the triangles are wonky, and I may as well have used white for all you can make out of the birds against that grey, but I love the light and dark, and the geometric block style. I can see me revisiting this one
• I don't know why I didn't do HSTs for those bits of the block I was able to - I think it would have kept my triangles straighter.

Block 8 - Bouquet

•  The pale blue star print is from the Bear Hugs (boys) range from Marcus Fabrics, the mid blue is Daisy from Lecien's Grandmother' Flower Garden line and the charcoal bicycles you've seen before is Bicycles by Michael Miller.
• I'm also pretty pleased with this block. Mostly because I thought it was going to be harder than it was, but also because I like the grading from dark to light.

 Block 9 - Box

•  The yellow is little elephants from Japanese fabric maker Daiwabo. I love it.
• I did the maths for this block instead of using templates. Incidentally, I'm a fan of erring on the large size for HSTs and trimming them - it makes even fairly big and simple blocks like this much more accurate. I cut 3.5" squares to make 2.5" square HSTs, to finish at 2".
• I didn't think through my elephant cutting, so they're not all upright - or, indeed, facing the same way. This irritates me. Did you notice it?

 Block 10 - Bowtie

• The middle square is the same Lecien print as in block 8, above, and the dandelion clocks is another Liberty Art fabric from last year's V&A Quilts exhibition.
• Don't laugh, but I'd never really clocked quite how bowtie-like this block was until I turned it on point
• I'm pleased I decided to use similar fabrics - I even considered making the whole bowtie out of one fabric. 

 Block 11 - Broken dishes

• Umm, npoe, haven't a clue what the fabrics are. Comment if you want me to check.
• It was only after I finished this that I realised it is basically the slightly-more-complicated twin of the block I made last week
• I did the sensible thing for this block and made 16 HST blocks rather than cutting 32 fiddly little triangle blocks

Someone in the Flickr group mentioned that it could be nice to see all the blocks completed so far, so I made a mosaic of all my blocks to date, and I'll do this every time I finish enough new blocks to make it worth it. I have to say I'm a little anxious about how not cohesive my blocks look, despite the fairly limited palette. I figure that once I'm up to 30-40 blocks it will all either come together or I'll be able to figure out what to ditch.

 

FWQAL: Blocks 5 & 6

These blocks mean I'm all caught up with the Farmer's Wife quilt along, which is now in its third week (and the Flickr group is up to an amazing 362 members!). From here on in I promise I'll limit myself to a post a week, regardless of whether I've completed one block or half a dozen (because, you know, that's likely).

Block 4 - Bat Wing

• The grey is Bicycles by Michael Miller, the white an organic from my stash.
• I'm not mad keen on this block. I'm not sure if it's my fabric choices, but it just isn't  that striking. Never mind, there are 110 others to look at.
• Even for a block with reasonably largge pieces, like this one, large scale prints jut don't work as well as small scales. Luckily I normally buy small scales!

 

Block 5 - Big Dipper

• The blue is River View in River Blue from Liesl Gibson's Oliver + S City Weekend for Moda range (now there's a fabric with a mouthful of a name). The yellow is a sunshine quilt leftover (as always, just leave a comment if you want me to check the name in my bag of selveges)
• I really like this block! The yellow is a bit paler and more lemony in real life, and it's a real summer block.
• I keep making triangle blocks and not thinking to make some of them from half square triangles. Did it again with this block. I will endeavour to remember next time.

Must go, the toddler has entered the workroom and I need to pin him down to take his measurements for his wedding outfit.

The draughtsman's wife: Block 3 (in which I demonstrate the complete absence of applique skills in my life) & 4 (in which I don't use templates)

I'd like to apologise to those of you not remotely interested in the Farmer's Wife quilt along. I am apparently incapable of posting about anything else at the moment (apart from my giveaway! Go there and enter now).

I made these blocks on the weekend, and there was a moment when I thought I might get blocks five and six knocked out too, but sadly we had to go and socialise with real people (apparently talking to your sewing machine doesn't count as a social life), so no dice. Probably it's a good thing - I could so easily get addicted to churning out these little 6" blocks. Each block is a mini-education in construction and colour selection, especially for a reasonably novice quilter like me, and the satisfaction of getting each one sewn is totally disproportionate to their diminutive stature.

Block 3 - Basket

• The grey is the square dot from Sherbert Pips for Moda (on the whole I'm not the hugest fan of this line, but I think the dots are fab), the yellow and blue floral is from Toy Box II by Sara Morgan for Blue Hill Fabrics - I love the teeny yellow pinwheels in this print.
• Rather than print out the 6R template, I just cut one triangle using template 6 ironed onto the back of the fabric. Ingenious, no?
• This was my first ever attempt at hand applique. It's not very good. In the absence of the time/inclination to actually look up any tutorials I just winged it. Possibly a tutorial would have helped. I'm banking on the quilting to flatten it out somewhat.
• I've never been the biggest fan of basket blocks. I have no idea why, as normally recreating traditional blocks in modern fabrics really excites me (possibly more than it should do), but to me the basket block just never looks that striking, no matter how cleverly it's reproduced. I still feel the same after actually making one, albeit not very cleverly.

Block 4 - Basket Weave

• Nope, couldn't tell you the name of any of those fabrics. Actually, I could if I went through my selvege bag, but I can't be bothered just now. Leave me  comment if you want to know and I'll happily check. 
• I made this block by piecing three 1.5"x14 strips of fabric, then cutting that piece into three 3.5"x3.5" squares.
• I'm rather pleased with the effect of the graded yellows in this block. As with the other blocks I've made, I'm not making any effort to match the values/tones of the original block designs, just pulling a combination that pleases me for each block.

It's not too late to join the quilt along - this one is likely to go on for the next year or so for most participants, so do come on over to the Flickr group (315 participants and counting!) and join in/be inspired/get slightly scared by the prolific piecing of some members.

The Farmer's Wife: How I print my templates

The Farmer's Wife Quilt comes with a CD of 106 templates, each on its own PDF. If you print them all out as they appear, that's 106 sheets of paper, each one around 90% unused. Even if you do the maths for the simpler blocks rather than print a template, it's still a heck of a lot of paper. I know some people have imported the whole lot into Illustrator and printed them as one document but (a) I lack the IT skills to do that and (b) I lack the Illustrator to do that.

I also quite wanted my templates on freezer paper to save on pinning. The solution came to me during a brief tweet chat with Amanda, and I thought I'd put the process into a quick tutorial in case anyone else is looking for a solution.

***

How to print templates with not a lot of wasted paper

You will need:

1. Freezer paper (or you can use plain paper, if you don't mind pinning your templates after printing)
2. Tape
3. A piece of A4 paper (I used jolly yellow so you could see the freezer paper more clearly)

What to do:

Print one of the larger shapes onto your paper, to give you an idea where the blocks will appear.

Tape a piece of freezer paper that is at least as big as the template onto your A4 paper, over the original print out. I found a small piece of tape in each corner was enough to hold the freezer paper in place through my home printer, but you may want to experiment with that. I save freezer paper scraps from bigger projects, so I had some bits ready to go, but after they ran out I just cut a piece approximately the right size off the roll.

I have heard that you can just iron the freezer paper onto normal paper, so I gave that a shot too. However, my printer is somewhat temperamental, and the freezer paper slipped and got a little chewed. Possibly I didn't do a good job of ironing it, but since the tape worked perfectly well I didn't bother persevering to find out.

Pop the paper back in the printer and print your template again. Make sure you insert it the same way as you did the first time you printed the template (you could mark the top right corner of your paper before your first printing if you're worried about forgetting which way up it goes).

As if by magic, your printer will print the template onto the freezer paper. Cut it out and you're good to go! Repeat 106 times more and you'll have all your templates at a fraction of the wastage of printing out an A4 sheet each time, at a fraction of the cost of Illustrator.

Of course, you don't need to print out every template onto the A4 piece of paper before taping some freezer paper on top, just err on the generous side when cutting out your freezer paper to stick on. Here are some other templates I printed on to the same piece of A4 by estimating where the freezer paper needed to go.

If you're really cheap (like me) you can even reuse the pieces of tape - just don't press too hard when you stick them down each time. I got two or three uses out of each piece of tape.

I know that's all probably extremely simple and you already thought of a better alternative while reading this, but maybe it will save one or two of you a couple of sheets of paper.

Playing catch up: Blocks 1 & 2

OK, so I'm a little way behind (I blame Amazon, for being unable to deliver my book the microsecond I ordered it, frankly), but here are blocks one and two from The Farmer's Wife quilt (in this household it is already nicknamed The Draughtsman's Wife). I believe the rest of the quilt along are getting stuck into week three. Hey ho.

After a minor mishap with block one (tip: when instructed to ensure that your print settings are set to 'print at full size' or equivalent, it's worth doing so. My 5 1/2" block is very sweet, but not terribly useful), I made pretty quick progress - block notes below.

Block 1 - Attic Windows

• I don't have a selvege from the grey, so no idea what it is. The brighter blue is from City Weekend by Oliver + S, the light blue a cloud fabric from my stash (I have a vague feeling it's a Makower fabric, but I could be wrong), the white is a random organic white.
• It's thanks to Katy that the text fabric reads the right way up when on point. Wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise.
• I could easily have done the maths for this block, but I decided to get in the template practise, so did it entirely from the template CD that comes with the book.

Block 2 - Autumn Tints

• The blue is a treasured Liberty Art fabric from the quilt exhibition at the V&A last year. This is the first time I have cut into any of the fabrics I bought there (you'll need to scroll down that post), the yellows are scraps from the sunshine quilt, and more random organic white.
•  I kind of wish I'd used at least one paler yellow, but hopefully this slightly bolder block won't stand out too much in 109 blocks' time.
• Even I couldn't bring myself to use the templates for this one. The maths took approximately eight seconds.

Along with a handful of others in the group, I'm working my way through the blocks in chronological order, because I know that otherwise I'd just leave myself all the tricky ones till the end.

I've faintly surprised myself by also enormously enjoying reading the letters that accompany the quilt blocks (I'm treating myself to a letter per pair of blocks at the moment). They are the kind of inclusion that normally I would ignore as a bit whimsical and unnecessary, but actually they offer a genuinely fascinating insight into the lives of a certain segment of the American population in the 1920s, more or less untouched by the right to vote, the flapper phenomenon or, indeed, many of the things that epitomise 1920s America to me, a 20-something Brit.

Oh, and for those of you getting cross with the one-teeny-template-perA4-sheet situation, I've also made a kind-of-tutorial (I hesitate to term it an actual tutorial in the face of all of the perfectly photographed and clearly explained how-tos that other bloggers put together) on printing out the templates in a slightly less wasteful way. I'm sure it's not remotely revolutionary, but maybe it'll save you a bit of paper - look out for it tomorrow.