Saturday, May 3, 2014

I have a lot of cards that I need to make for May birthdays, and I want to keep moving forward with my Farmer’s Wife Sampler blocks. I used a couple of orphan blocks yesterday for two cards and I planned to get more done today.

I was thinking of a conversation Stacia and I had when we were sewing together. She suggested that at the start of every sewing day I should make one of the Farmer’s Wife blocks. It would cut into the time I had to stitch on my “main” project, but I’d be getting several done in a week. There are 111 of the blocks so I need to have several done each week if they are to be done for the quilt show next Spring. I thought I would add a bit to that idea and work on one card each sewing day as well.

Today was the test, and it didn’t work out very well. I picked out the pattern for three of the cards I wanted and set about getting one of them done. I was about half done when I decided the pattern was flawed; I had to recut to get the correct number of pieces in the correct size. Before finishing though I decided the pattern was right and it was my understanding of the way it worked that was wrong (I hate it when that happens)! The morning was over before I had one card top done.

After lunch I started on my Farmer’s Wife block. This was an easy one (or so I thought) and I decided I wouldn’t use the paper piecing method but simply cut the various squares I needed. It was the math that got me this time; I made my half square triangles plenty large enough, and then cut them down to a half inch smaller than they should have been. More cutting and restitching. I have just now finished that block and it is time to quit for the day. My “main” project will suffer unless I can move a little faster (and more carefully)!

I caught up on our laundry today and, although the sun isn’t exactly shining, I hung a load out on the step to dry in the breeze. Our lilac is very close to blossoming and I detected a faint lilac fragrance in the air as I was hanging the clothes. I’ve missed the best part of the lilac blossoms the past few years as I’ve been travelling so I’m looking forward to them this year.

I got a notice from the library today that I have a book due back in a couple of days. I’ll spend some time this evening making my way through some of the last few hundred pages.