Month: July 2013

Kansas City Star July Block

2013 KC Star July block

Well, I’ve dragged myself back to the sewing machine!  It’s been a busy summer here with work & family things going on.  I wanted to keep up with the block of the month though so here is the July block.  After taking a look at it in the paper, I was worried it might take me all month to finish this one.  It was a challenge!  I’ve never put together a block in this way.  I’m noticing in the picture that my center star didn’t come out all the straight but it’s not too noticeable in the actual block.

For this block, the center part was made first, then the outside star arms were put together and attached with partial seams to the center portion.  Hard to describe and I was just not sure if I would be able to figure it out but I followed the directions and after a couple of the star arms were attached, I got the hang of it.  Despite a little crookedness, I think it looks nice.  I was so happy to use up some of that dark red, which is a Christmas print that someone gave me with little Santa sleighs on it.  I have probably 2 yards of it and it needs to be used up.

Here are all the blocks together:

2013 blocks

It’s Done!!

Farmer's Wife quilt

My Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt is finally finished!  And it only took me 2 years!  OK, that’s not too shabby considering I did all 111 blocks and I hand quilted the whole thing.  I really enjoyed making this quilt which is strange because I always stayed away from sampler quilts in the past.  This one was challenging and fun because every block was something new.  It’s from the book called “The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt” by Laurie Aaron Hird.  She has a website about the quilt as well with the same title.

One minor problem I ran into with my hand quilting was the pencil I used to mark the quilting lines around the border.  Since the fabric was so dark, I used a white pencil called Nonce Marking Pencil.  There were a couple places that I marked that I couldn’t get the marking lines to wash off.  Someone online suggested using a toothbrush and water to scrub the lines off so I tried that and got most of them off.  I’m guessing that I got a little heavy handed when I marked a few areas and those really didn’t want to be wiped off.  The directions did say to “mark lightly”.

I just need to make a label and it probably should be something spectacular.  I’ll have to post that later.