2016 County Fair Block: Corn and Beans

Thank you to those of you who completed the poll of designs for the county fair block. If you would like to see the results, you can click here. Here is a recap of the options:

and this is my summary/interpretation of the results:

-A majority chose design 2 as first place (6 out of 8)
-If you combine the two diagonal designs, they were picked first place twice but six people picked them for second place.
-Design 1 was chosen last place four times, the most of any one design. I think I did it a disservice by showing it without a border. I actually think in a quilt, it would work the best (assuming the white is a common or main background color of most blocks), especially with sashing between the blocks.

Given that the diagonal designs seemed the most popular and I felt it was an interesting option, I chose Design 4, the better of the two diagonals, in my opinion.

And without any further drama, here is my block!

I received the green bean fabric on Friday and had time on Saturday to do some quilting.

I thought about doing a trial block with other fabrics first as I have done in the past, but I just couldn't make myself do it. Or, rather, I was too excited to make the block with the actual fabrics to stop myself.

I oversized all of the half-square triangle pieces and the triangles and then cut them down to the exact size needed after they were sewn together. I was determined to get a full 12.5" block this year!! You can't use this trick with every pattern, but it's great for half-square triangles. (HSTs are the squares that are made up of two identical triangles sewn together from point to opposite point of the square.)

I will tell you, I still undid quite a number of seams while putting the pieces together. After each quarter was assembled, I checked the measurements again. One was off enough that I had to make adjustments to the seam. It gets a little skinny in one section, but it will hold. And even when it was all done, I had a little gap on one side and I decided the black triangle was sewn on with a crooked seam. So I took half of that seam out and resewed it too. That fixed the problem and I have an honest 12.5" square now. Hurray!

The theme was Farmers Market and the block is called "Corn and Beans". Obviously the corn fabric and bean fabric emphasize the name of the block. I am happy with it. I'm sure they are looking for appliqued scenes, but piecing is what I like to do and I stuck with it again this year.

The block has been washed, starched and ironed. I'm going to cut the loose strings off the back of the block, but otherwise it is done and ready for the fair in August! Can I get a "woo hoo" for no last minute sewing this year!??

Keeping Twitchy Fingers Occupied

I have been so eager to work on the quilt blocks for the Farm Girl Vintage quilt that I have to admit that I have worked a week (or two) ahead. Not so bad, but I am getting ahead of Kim who was sick this week, and that's no fun.

So I put my mind to other projects that I could work on that would involve the same work. And I thought of the Cass County Fair raffle quilt block. As you may recall, the theme is Farmers Market and the fabrics I get to use are these:

(I can add up to two additional fabrics if I want.)

A while ago I decided that I wasn't going to attempt an applique scene and did some research on some pieced blocks I could do. Since I have corn fabric, I concentrated on blocks with corn in the name and found this great "Corn and Beans" block from Patchwork Square. (There are a lot of nice patterns there for free.)

I have a bit of a conundrum about how to place the fabrics though. It looks great in the three colours shown here, but I have to use all of the fabrics in the kit. So I have to use at least five. How to place them?

I also like to keep in mind that most blocks that are appliqued will have the cream fabric as the background and likely it will appear in a lot of the blocks. I also thought that I have to add a bean fabric (most likely green) to complete the block name.

So I did a couple of rough mock ups in Excel to experiment with different colour additions and placements. (I know these samples only have four colours--I figure I can fussy cut green from the seed packet fabric to work with the bean fabric and will use the corn and solid yellow in the yellow triangles.) Take a look and tell me what you think. Have any preferences or thoughts?

1. Black in White

2. White in Black

3. Diagonal 1 (dark on dark; light on light)

4. Diagonal 2 (dark on light; light on dark)

I would love it if you would take a second to rank them in this poll:
Create your own user feedback survey

and love it even more if you left a comment with your reaction or reasoning. Thanks!

Meanwhile, I have ordered some green bean fabric online (surprisingly hard to find!) and will wait for it to arrive before I start deciding--or cutting--anything.

So meanwhile meanwhile, I will have to think of some other project to keep my fingers from sewing too far ahead on the Farm Girl Vintage quilt!!