Epic Finish! My farmers wife quilt all done!

I promised you the revelation of my epic quilt! A long adventure and I enjoyed every minute of it (okay almost all). And needless to say I learned a lot from it too! The end result is far from perfect, but I am totally in love with it!

In the last three years I paperpieced 100 farmers wife blocks (there were 111 patterns in the book). I used all kinds of fabrics, no theme really, just what I put my hands on and was into in the moment. Some weeks I disciplined myself to make two every week. I Sewed two and cut the papers and fabrics for the next two. This helped me to have a little job waiting for me in my sewing room, even if I had just a quarter of an hour to spare. I had such fun wit them. When I started out I was a very inexperienced paperpiecer. I had to unpick a lot of times and there are still visible mistakes in some of the more difficult blocks. I decided to love them anyway.

About half way I discovered I was cutting the blocks down a little to far... They were about half an inch smaller than they were supposed to be. After some swearing and a few weeks of sewing depression I decided to just go on from there and tot trust myself I would find a way to fix this. When I had about 80 blocks I brought them to a meeting with my quilting friends and told them about my problem. I couldn't make my self throw out 50 blocks I painstakingly made. After a few ideas we settled on lining them and alternating putting the blocks "en point" and straight. That way I gave my self room to fix the size difference. I decided to do that with a beige linnen so the very colorful blocks would bee toned down a little. After some evenings of lining blocks and hanging them on my "design wall" I decided it to be just a bit boring. I ordered som ice blue linnen to. I conferred with my quilting friends on instagram. Would I put in a row of light blue, or some scattered blocks, or even alternating colors? I decided on scattered crosses.

The quilt is pretty big! 2.20 meters square. How would I back this monster. I decided on leftovers in muted blues, grey and whites. I also got out a pile of discarded shirts from Alexander I kept to use in quilts and started ironing and cutting them up. I made a big jigsaw of it on the bed and put it together. The sandwiching was a bog job of course, but I smelled the finish so I got right to it.

After another input round I quilted it with my free motion foot on my home machine using a dogwood pattern in a light grey thread. This was hard work and I felt like a wrestler at times. Again not perfect, but I wasn't disappointed by myself at all! I love the allover effect.

Last but not least the binding. I love striped bindings but black and white was to much for me here. So I used a coupon from Ikea in a blue and white stripe. After three evenings of sewing the binding to the back by hand, this lovely monster is finished.

Thank you for a lovely adventure Laurie Aaron Hird and all the contributing farmers wives. I've already started the next farmer's wife 1930's sampler quilt to be finished in 2018!

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