Sad sad quilter

I was doing more fan quilting this morning and I just love the loft from the wool batting.
 

But then I took a few steps back from the quilt and realized that the fan quilting was messing with the lines of the block piecing.  The loft of the batting and the shape of the fans were distracting.  It kind of reminded me of funhouse mirrors.  That is not a look I go for in my quilting.

As most of you know, string blocks involve a lot of piecing and a lot of love.  When some strings finish at ¼ or ½", it takes a long time to finish a 12" block.  It just didn't seem respectful of the time put in by my bee mates to quilt them in a way that took away from the strings.

So, I'm ripping out all of the fan quilting.  It is almost halfway done, so that is a lot of stitches to rip.  But I quilted some varied width diagonal lines on the other half of the quilt and I think that this plan is going to work better.

Just send me some extra patience with my seam ripper for the next two or three days.

The last few Farmers Wife blocks

I finally returned to my Farmers Wife quilt.  I had a few more blocks to remake and most of them were paper pieced, so I stalled for a long long time. 

The yellow in the chicken fabric above just didn't work with the other colors in the quilt.  At first I thought I could calm the yellow with a blue, but that didn't work, then I tried a different blue floral with the red plaid below and that didn't work either.  Thankfully this block is not paper pieced because 4 tries was bad enough. 

I definitely had to paper piece the flower garden path block.  I kept the same fabrics, but this time the block didn't end up as a rectangle with wonky center points. 

I lost a number of the triangle points on the corn and beans block above.  The background gray didn't work with my chosen sashing either.  Even with paper piecing, the seams in the block below are thick so the block doesn't lie perfectly, but it will have to do. 

For my first version of the garden path block, I thought that the yellow fabric was far too prominent and the other fabrics were too tropical.  I like the second version much much better. 

And, lastly, I made this paper pieced version of the spider legs block.  I didn't even try to make this one with the templates so it is the first try for this bock.  I love the purple and peach combination.

I have the quilt top pieced together, but it needs a lot of pressing before I try to take any pictures, so you'll have to wait a few days.

Americana

I don't think I've ever been so deeply in love with a traditional patchwork quilt before.

Most of these fabrics are Suzuko Koseki, Lecien, Anna Maria Horner, Denyse Schmidt, a little Moda Hometown and some Lakehouse seed packet fabric.  I challenged myself by using red, white and blue and muted tones while trying to make this traditional palette look modern.  So, I named this one Americana.

I think the perle cotton big stitches and x's in black really make this quilt.

Here is the back.

The part that took the longest was burying the diagonal stitches of the x's in between the layers of the quilt so you can only see horizontal and vertical lines on the back. 

Here is a shot after washing the quilt.  The binding is from Moda's Mama Said Sew line.  I love that charcoal dictionary print.

Right now this quilt is neatly tucked next to the couch, but I'm certain that soon it will be dragged into service for Henry.  His favorite books seem to need a lot of naps in my bed lately.  "Buzz book sleeping...shhhh...Wake UP!"

Fields of Green

One of my favorite things about my home state of Wisconsin is driving on the highway and seeing the fields planted on either side of the road.  I love the plowed dirt, the rows of yellow-green seedlings, the half grown plants all deep green and healthy and the late season plants that start turning olive green before the fall.  Green is the largest part of my fabric stash and my scraps.

A friend of mine is a CSA farmer in Wisconsin and she just had a baby.  I've never made a monochromatic quilt before but this time I just had to try.

Lots of different greens and then the organic lines of quilting seemed like a good fit.  And I love the bright veggies on the back.

Here is a picture of the quilting lines after washing the quilt.

This one measures 44 x 48" and features a thin batting which makes it a good light summer quilt.  I hope that my baby farming friend likes it.