Farm Girl Vintage Quilt Finished

The quilt--it is finished.

With persistence, all 326 inches of the binding was hand stitched to the back and done before I went home for Easter.

Here is a full view of the quilt:

It contains 44 of the 45 blocks from Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage book. (I omitted the "Old Glory" block of the American flag.) The setting is my own invention. It needed to be created to accommodate my combination of 6-inch and 12-inch blocks.

The sashing is proportionally a bit wide, but I wanted the centre of the quilt to cover the top of a queen mattress. I think it also helps to calm the quilt down a bit because that is a lot of busy blocks all together!

Looking at it now, I would have liked the green diamond accents to have been larger and perhaps centred differently. But there were constraints presented by the way the sashing was constructed and the fact that a 12-inch block is not as big as two 6-inch blocks plus a sashing in between.

The corner blocks of the border are also an issue as they don't appear to be centred in the space because the outer triangles match the border fabric. I'll have to research how to do it differently, or just use a different block as cornerstones. (I did consider star blocks but I wanted to keep the borders simple and clean. Maybe I should have used the maple leaf block.)

Don't start thinking that I don't like the quilt because I certainly do. But I can't help but evaluate what I think worked and what I would do differently next time. And this is the place where I record my thoughts.

One thing I am happy with is the look of the blocks. I was going for a low-contrast look and think it worked out. The contrast between the different block pieces isn't really stark but it's not all mush either. You can still easily see what the blocks are.

I don't think I've showed the binding yet:

I ended up having enough of the same brown to make another flange on the outside of the border (with all of 10" leftover!). The binding is a very bland print that I bought a lot of once because I thought it would work for a quilt, but it's never been right. Since I didn't have enough of the blue polka dot for the binding, I am happy with this nondescript colour that doesn't compete with the flange.

I cut the backing and batting about 1/8" past the quilt top so that I could sew the binding on with a 3/8" seam. This way binding will be completely "stuffed" by the batting but you won't end up with a really thin binding on the front.

I basted the flange down first with a zigzag stitch so it would tamp down the outer edge at the same time. I cut the binding at 2.5 inches (worried it might be a bit large) but am very happy I didn't go with 2.25 inches. There ended up being a few spots I had to trim the extra batting and backing down a bit so the binding would fit.

This was the first quilt where I sewed down the mitred corners of the binding. I never really believed it was necessary or made a difference, but dang if it didn't look a lot better!

Sewn on right; not sewn on left.

So now I guess I will be doing that from now on. The good news is that the idea was planted by watching a video of an easy way to do it. (Not so much an easy way, but how to do it while stitching the binding down. I had always thought of it as a separate step and it's not.) So although it is "one more thing", it's not much extra and actually does make a big difference. (This is me eating crow here.)

After the quilt was done and I could sit back and look at it, I was surprised at how well centred the quilting pattern turned out. You can see on the farmhouse that the pattern has loops exactly on both chimneys and first floor windows.

The barn was similarly centered:

Presumably a coincidence of the stitching repeat and the size of the block, but a happy one.

I mentioned that I pieced the back:

The large center piece is the yellow gingham that I had. The rest is made up of fabrics that weren't my favourites and then a few more to make up the difference. I used 10" blocks to fill in the sides, with some 10x20" pieces and one 20x20" piece where I had enough fabric to do so.

The back ended up quite a bit larger than the front, which is good for loading it on the long arm machine, but did result in some funny spots on the back. Like here:

where you can see a 1/4" strip of fabric at the top of the photo. If I had known it would work out like that, I could have shifted the back and gotten rid of that extra seam. But when you load the one end of the quilt on the machine, you don't know exactly how the other end will come out. (And as long as it's not too short, you don't really care!)

On the sides, the outside 10" blocks were cut off to just a few inches:

But again, as long as it's not too short, we don't really care! I did recover all that extra fabric after the backing was cut off and put it all in the box of scraps. So they may resurface on another quilt one day.

One thing I noticed while doing the binding and my nose was just inches from the quilt, was a lot of spots on the back where the batting was pushed through the fabric and where the needle tore through the fabric instead of piercing it cleanly.

You may have to click on the picture to see it in a larger size, but each circle in the picture is a spot where the stitching push through a tuft of batting. (This is called "bearding".) Each line is a thread of the fabric that was pulled because the needle didn't go through cleanly. This didn't happen with the last quilt I did using the same batting, so my current theory is that the needle was too dull. (I have since learned that wool batting can be tough on needles. I don't know exactly why.) Next time I use the long arm machine, I will ask for a fresh needle to be put on and that should take care of it. (I hope.)

While visiting at Easter, I had a little quilt show and tell at my mom's house of my recent quilts. Here is the Farm Girl Vintage on her bed:

And I know you've been waiting for this too...here is Kim's quilt:

The top is in two halves and is not put together or quilted but you can see how her blocks are arranged and how the quilt will look. She also had to get creative with her layout as she had even more 12-inch blocks. Her quilt has such a crisp clean look with the light sashing and the clear contrast in all of her blocks. It looks fantastic.

And here's one more shot of my quilt on the bed we set up for my sister (a different sister) in the construction zone:

That's right, she had the honour of being the first to sleep under the quilt!!

Project stats and facts:

• The quilt is 74x84".
• The project was started in January 2016, and one block was done each week throughout the year as a quilt-along with my sister.
• The blocks are a mix of hand sewn and machine sewn.
• Although I would do it if I had to, I have no desire to work with 1" and 3/4" pieces again!
• I spoke to this sister more in 2016 than any other year of our lives as we Skyped each week to show our blocks.
• Most fabrics were purchased as I decided on a 1930s theme and had none in my stash. (A few stash fabrics that fit in well enough were used.)
• It was the third quilt I have done on a long arm machine. I created the pantograph pattern because I wanted the look of chicken wire.

Block 27: Chicken Foot

This week's block is the Chicken Foot block. The picture on the left is the first quadrant of the block that I finished. (That was from Instagram. Yes, I'm on Instagram now. You can follow if you want sneak peeks of projects I'm working on. I resist posting pictures of the finished project, though. I do that right here on this blog.)

The block had a lot of half square triangle units and when I was cutting the fabric, I decided that I would cut the squares a little bigger and get two HST squares from each, instead of just one. So I did the math, cut the pieces and made a note to myself so I would remember when it was time to sew this block. So far so good.

Once all the HSTs were sewn, cut apart and pressed, it became apparent that they were far too large. I don't know if it was my math or a bad formula but all of them were a nice 2" instead of the 1.5" they should have been. (The fact that they were all consistent was not a comfort.)

So, I cut all 16 of them down to the correct size and then had to resew the seam. I had hand stitched them so there was no just cutting the seam as you could do with machine stitching. So you could say I got twice the pleasure from sewing this block. :)

Here is the final block:

Yes, I think it looks a lot like the bear paw block (like this one I did for the fair last year). But that's ok. In this quilt, it's a chicken foot.

Here is the back:

It's a bit of a mess but I think I got it all pressed flat. I just read a blog post where someone tried the advice to use a hammer for a particular bulky and recalcitrant seam intersection! I didn't have to go that far.

Here are all the blocks in a mock layout:

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And here is Kim's block:

The next block or two may be late. I'm going to see Kim the end of next week so we are going to save that block for when we see each other. (She has hers sewn; I plan to sew mine on the drive there.) And then I expect to be without internet for the week so I doubt I will be posting. But, don't worry, I'll get you all caught up as time allows.

Block 26: Kitchen Window

You can see my fancy ziplock
travel case! :P

The Kitchen Window block had a nice simple construction. Last Sunday I knew I would be killing time in the afternoon so I packed up the block, needle, thread and scissors to take with me.

My only miscalculation was that I finished the block before my time was up! (That was because when I was preparing the materials the night before, I couldn't resist starting on the sewing. And then sewing just one more seam...)

I was a beautiful day. Some would say too hot, but sitting in the shade after freezing in the AC--it felt wonderful to me!

On most seams, I take the time now to mark the quarter inch line. My blocks are turning out much better (and mostly the right size). It's a little more time to start, but it makes it so I can just concentrate on the sewing and the size of my stitches, and not think about the line. It's nice to simplify the process by breaking it down into separate steps.

You can see on the finished block that the blue lines on the seams are still visible,

especially through that white fabric. (Although it's a bit amusing that the blue matches one of the stripes in the fabric of the outer border so that you could almost convince yourself that it belongs there!)

But all that blue showing on the right side is easily taken care of with a rinse under some water. I let it dry, then a starch and press and I have another finished block:

What a nice view through my "kitchen window". Fruit and flowers. Lovely.

Here are all the blocks finished so far in a mock layout:

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And here is Kim's block:

Whereas I made the inner and outer borders similar in value, Kim made the inner border and the centre both light and the outer border contrasting. And you can see that we both used the same yellow flower fabric!

Block 25: Winter Star

This week's block was the Winter Star. Obviously we did not keep the seasons in mind as we scheduled the blocks. It's been warm and gorgeous this week.

The pattern starts by making these units:

There's a left rectangle and a right rectangle. Those are pretty easy to put together with the "flippy corner" method. But then when you sew the rectangles together, you have to match two seams to make nice points. The seams are pressed the same way so the placement is less secure while you're sewing the seam.

All this is to say that I sewed the four units like this together on a wing and a prayer and had one come out good enough to keep. The other three I had to undo half of the seam to fix one of the points. I still considered it a victory to have one of the points work out in each unit. :) With the second sewing, the rest of the points were good (enough). And I could move on.

You may have noticed that I used different orange fabrics. I didn't have enough of any one orange that I liked but I did have plenty of orange scraps from a pumpkin block that's coming up later. So I picked out eight different fabrics and placed them in matching pairs. (Their match is not the piece they're sewn to, but the one kitty-corner--the one that would be their "corner" in square dancing, if that means anything to you. You'll see why this is when the block comes together.)

The rest of the pieces were fairly straight forward and the block went together like this:

This block had more matching than some of the others. Besides the points in the units discussed above, you also had to match the diagonal lines with the red squares. As I recall, that did not require any ripping and re-sewing. Perhaps because I made sure to trim all the units to the right size before sewing them together. (I didn't trim off much at all, but it can make a real difference.)

And here are all the blocks done so far in a virtual layout:

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Here is Kim's block:

She chose a beautiful piece for the centre of the star. I find it interesting how her block reverses mine--blues and purples where I have oranges and reds and red where I have blue. It draws your eye in a completely different way. Quilting--a never ending adventure! :)

Block 24: Sunday Morning

The past week has been a little crazy with lots of company and big family events so this will be brief. I wasn't sure I would be able to sew this block, but I managed to get it done in a couple short sessions when I had 10-15 minutes in the morning. But not Sunday morning, even though that is the block name. :)

The fabrics in the center don't have a lot of contrast, but I think there's enough that you can see the hour glass blocks. It was a bit of a strange block in that it has three areas for background fabric--the light part of the hour glass blocks, the first border and the second border--but the design didn't call for the same fabric to be used.

Actually I think the outside border was not a background fabric in the design, but I didn't want to have a dark outline to the block. I really liked using the sampler letters fabric there. I picked up the fabric because I thought it went with the 30s time period of the rest of the fabric, but it's a really hard fabric to use in a block! These long skinny pieces were perfect! :)

Here are all of the blocks done so far:

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Here is Kim's block:

A lovely blue and green combination.

Block 22: Old Red Barn

 Every farm needs an old red barn, doesn't it?

While I was growing up, we had four chicken barns. Three had layers in them and the fourth was used for raising the chicks.

As I recall, they were identical except that one was shorter. But from the front, they all looked just about the same. I assume that is why someone decided to paint the trim on the barns different colours.

The first one was red, then blue or was it brown? Wait...let me see if I can find a picture...

Here we go:

You get the picture now, I'm sure. Then you could tell someone to go to the red barn or the blue one, etc. Except we never did. We always referred to them by number. Simply "#1" or "#4". Not even "Barn 1" which is what I heard others sometimes say. We would just say, "Dad's working in #2." Never seemed odd at the time...

Anyway, all this is to say that we didn't really have an old red barn, but if you stretch the truth a little, I could at least say we had a red barn. And now I've also had a nice little trip down Memory Lane.

Back to the quilt block, this is one of the 12" blocks I'm doing (to match the farm house). So although there were quite a number of pieces in the block, they weren't unmanageably tiny.

The barn door is made up of quarter-square triangles. The designer had you do them in a curious way. The technique works well and is common enough, but you ended up with four blocks and three are extra that you don't use!! (There are other methods just as easy and simple that don't make extra blocks.) I decided this was an opportunity for experimenting with seam pressing.

So here are two of the blocks. Can you tell which one has the seams pressed open and which had them pressed to one side?

How about these ones?

Here are the backs of the first two:

And here's the second pair:

Did you get them right? I think the open seams lie a lot flatter on the front and in this case that is what I wanted.

Here is the door in the block with little duckies in the window:

Here's the back of another part of the block:

I chose to press all the seams that I could toward the red fabric. That would make the barn stand up a little from the background. So in this case, although the peak of the roof is made from a flying goose unit and the seam would normally be pressed toward the outside, I pressed them toward the center. It makes the point bulkier but it worked.

You can also see that I made the unusual choice of dividing the one horizontal seam. It's pressed up in the middle (to keep the red dominant over the window), but there was no way the seams on the side were letting me press them up and back on themselves. So I snipped the seam allowance and pressed it as shown. (No quilting police showed up at my door either.)

Here it is from the front:

I don't know how obvious it is in the picture, but I think you can see that the window is slightly depressed compared to the red barn. Subtle I know, but I can't help trying to manage it.

And, finally, here is the whole block:

A nice classic red barn with a quilt block door and duckies inside. :)

Here are all the blocks in the virtual layout:

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Here is Kim's (first) block:

Yes, she did a 6" one first. I don't remember exactly, but I think she meant to do a 12" but cut the 6" pieces out of habit and put it together anyway. And then the red fabric she used was too thin to make a nice block so she decided to do it again and made the 12" version below.

 I love the red barn board fabric she used. It will go so nicely with the muted tones she is using. (Better than the bright classic red that I used.)

And of course, the animals in all her windows are cute as anything!

Block 21: Haystack Block (Making Hay)

The haystack block was just a matter of adding strips to an ever-increasing center. I didn't like all of the fabrics that were in the "kit" I made earlier, so I replaced a few.

I have to decide whether to put in the quilt with the longest strips horizontal or vertical.

I'll probably make the final decision when I know where it ends up in the quilt and what's around it.

This block was proof that my seams are a little big. I stitched by hand and made sure to stitch inside the marked quarter-inch line, but apparently I need to adjust. You can see that it pulls in where there are more seams and every time I added a strip, I had to stretch it a bit to make it fit.

I pressed the first two seams open so the centre is nice and flat. After that, though, it made more sense to press the to the newly-added strip of fabric with no seams in it.

Here is a look at all of the blocks so far.

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Here is Kim's block:

She went with mostly oranges and yellows since it's a Haystack Block. :)