Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt (Part 1 - March 2013)

 Jennifer invited me to join her in sewing/making/quilting the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt.  I'm all about sampler quilts.  So, off to buy the book I went.  I finally had to settle for amazon.com for my copy because no bookstore, crafting store or quilting store in my area had it.

She wanted to use paper piecing to do the blocks.  fantastic. I love paper piecing.  It's so precise and there are NO pins to slow me down!!

So I joined the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt Along Group on yahoo! They have templates for paper piecing   and a very active message board and LOTS of pictures.

I decided to use some fabric I already had from Connecting Threads. I think it's the autumn collection or something similar.

For March, I set a goal for myself to construct 10 blocks.  I did it.  Well, I finished the 10th block on April 1, but I included in my batch for March.  I skipped 3. Basket.  I wasn't ready for it.  I needed to think on that one a little (spoiler alert, it'll be in the April batch) But I'm trying to work mostly in order.  I did skip number 11 and went straight to 15 because it was the next easiest one and I wanted to get finished!

In no particular order:

1. Attic Windows

2. Autumn Tints

10. Bowtie

4. Basket Weave.
Husband was startled when I showed him this one.  Yes, it looks like a swastika. I could  have modified it but I didn't.

15. Buzzard's Roost
See why I skipped ahead to this one?  It was easy!

6. Big Dipper

5 Bat Wing

8. Bouquet -- I LOVE the clean lines on this one.  

7. Birds in the Air
this is the first one that made me think, "WOW, these blocks are tiny." But I'm pretty  sure it won't be the last.

9. Box
This one was REALLY hard for me to figure on how to paper piece.  I ended up  just doing the conventional way because I was just doing a lot of staring and not a lot of understanding.  I might end up redoing this one because I'm not very pleased with some of the joining pieces.

The coloring of the fabric seems to be a little off in the pictures.  I'm using natural light plus, taking all the pictures on my yellow cutting mat.  For example: the sickly yellow looking background in Box is actually a really pale pea green.