Farmers Wife Finish for February?

 The UFO Challenge number for February was 12, which is my Farmers Wife Quilt.  I worked on it a bit last year, but still was only around halfway finished with the blocks.  When I first saw this number announced I felt like no way could I finish this in a month.  Then I started thinking that I managed to finish a quilt with 110 trees, then made 120 blocks for my Colorado Memories quilt.  Surely I can finish 55 blocks for this quilt in a month.  

Plus, my Island Batik Challenge is already finished for this month, so what else do I have to do?  

One wrinkle in my plan is that I have misplaced the CD with the templates for the blocks.  No worries, I just sat down with EQ8 and drafted out the blocks that I need them for.  Like this beauty!  I haven't done Y-seams in a while, so it's good to sharpen up those skills!

I was surprised at how well this came out with those odd shaped pieces!

Love this one!  

Cutting the squares for this one was tricky, but it also came together well.  I counted out how many blocks I had left to make at the end of the day, and it's 43.  If I make 4 a day all the blocks will be done, and I'll have two weeks to put the top together and bind.  I think I can do it!  At least if I can get the top done it will be a big win, and I'll be happy with my progress.  Let's see if I can move this project out of the bin and into a quilt.

All About Strings, Bright and Beautiful!

I hope you've enjoyed the blog hop so far, it's really gone by fast!  I barely got my project finished on time, but it is done, and I really love it!  This quilt is totally a scrap quilt made from lots of leftover bits and pieces from many projects.

Isn't it colorful?  I've been sewing up scrap blocks for a while, so I had a good stack of them to make the top with.  These blocks are really simple, just random strips from my scrap bin sewn diagonally onto a foundation of telephone book pages.  The pages tear off the back super easy, and it helps keep those diagonal seams from stretching out of shape.  Here's a block before I trimmed it up to 6 1/2 x 8 1/2.

The tricky thing is that if you want to make the diamond pattern that I did, that you need to make half the blocks going one way, and half the opposite.  I had a few too many slanting the wrong way!

Oh, well.  That gives me a good start for the next set of blocks.  You see, my scrap bin still is overflowing, so I'll need to keep sewing these up and make another quilt (or 2 at least).

I thought I would share my secret for making an awesome string quilt.  When you are choosing strips, make sure to put the craziest combinations together that you can.  Seriously, put a brown floral next to a bright stripe!  Then add a pink cat print. 

Christmas fabrics?  Sure, throw them in the mix, too!

Dinosaurs work well, and modern florals are fun.

Baseballs, clocks, bears, anything goes - and when you put it all together, the results are a perfectly scrappy and fun quilt!

I quilted it with a large meander in green thread and I had just enough of this bright apple print for the back.  I found a fun green print for the binding - it has bananas on it, so I think this quilt will be "Fruit Salad".  Come to think about it, a quilt like this is a lot like a salad - lots of good things all chopped up and mixed together to make something wonderful and satisfying.

Thank you, Carla for hosting this fun blog hop! I got lots of ideas for more string quilts so I can use up all my scraps (someday!)   I hope you've all enjoyed my take on making a string quilt.  They really are fun!  Make sure to go see Carla's blog (Creatin In the Sticks) and enter to win a great prize!