One step away from new quilt on bed

 

I have worked on this Farmers' Wife Sampler quilt for a very long time.  I started it back in July and finished the number of blocks I needed for the layout I chose by the end of December.  The first two months of this year have been very busy, so getting the blocks put together with the other elements that compose the top has been a challenge.  I think I finished the flying geese units in one week's time though... that's what happens when you get close to the end of a project.   The flying geese units were paper pieced, as were all the blocks.  The flying geese units consisted of 6 geese and each unit was 9" long.  I don't know how I did it, but I did not have to adjust the size of any of the geese to get the borders to turn out right.  It required 40 units for the border.  I would shudder to think how long it would take to complete 240 flying geese by any other method.

Today I was able to display my finished quilt on a new pulley system we set up between the garage and the house which enables me to hang a whole quilt and be able to back up enough to get the complete picture.  Of course the wind was blowing today, and the sun was causing a shadow of the garage roof line, but I like how the pictures turned out.  There is a metal pole that is attached to the pulley ropes on both sides and I made a sleeve that I can slide onto the pole and pin the quilt to the sleeve and pull it up into position.  Of course this quilt is quite large compared to the size of most of the quilts I will be taking pictures of, but it did require some thought on how to get it hung to show the whole quilt.  This quilt has the ropes pulled up to their limit, and I doubt I will need to hang a larger quilt... at least not any time soon.

This is a close up of one border edge.  I know I have posted other pictures, but I did not have the last outside strip to finish off the flying geese border.  My original plan did not include flying geese, but after auditioning a short strip next to the finished center, I knew that I had found the right border for this quilt.  In case it is not clear, the sky part of the flying geese is the same fabric as I used for the setting triangles.  The fabric for the sashing strips and the red framing borders on the blocks both have a gold thread weaving through the design.  This definitely takes it out of the 1920 time frame that the FWS book was designed around... but that's OK, I love the way all the fabric choices work together.

It has been a long project.  I did not work on it continuously, but I tried to get two or three blocks done each time I sat down to work on it.  The actual Famers' Wife Sampler blocks only number 63 in this quilt.  In the layouts in the book, most use all 111 blocks.  I like how the blocks stand out more as individuals with setting triangles between instead of another block.  It has a different effect, and may not qualify as an official Farmers' Wife Sampler because I did not include all 111 blocks, and I chose a totally different layout.

My next challenge is to get this quilt on the frame and decide how I will quilt it.