Farmer's Wife

For those of you who know the actual length of my WIP list...I want to assure you that I have not started a new project.  I just joined the Farmer's Wife QAL b/c I used that book for many of my USA state blocks and I'm hoping that the peer pressure will help me to finish.

If you weren't following my blog last summer, I started a  project where I want to make a 6 inch block for each state using fabric that came from that state and that the block has some sort of significance or link to the state.  I've been hand-piecing these.  It was a challenge I made to myself last year to make 3 quilts using hand piecing methods.

And there was a spin-off project of doing 80 pieced blocks in blue and white for my mom as a history quilt.  Each block or name of the block will reference something that happened during that year of her life.  I refer to this project as the "Betty Jeanne" quilt.  These blocks are machine pieced.

Here are some of the individual blocks and their stories.

This block is  Corn & Beans (FW #22) for Iowa.

Farmer's Daughter (FW #32) for Nebraska.   I bought both the Iowa and Nebraska fabrics on a road trip last summer.

The red & white blocks are hand pieced. ( It was a 2 week, 6000 mile road trip.  )

  The Maple Leaf  (FW #56) in red is the block for Maine, and in blue will represent one of the years in the first 2 decades of mom's life as her maiden name is Maple.   The red fabric was purchased in Maine by my mom and younger daughter when they were in New England for a wedding.

This block is listed in Farmer's Wife as (#72) Railroad, but it is also called "Road to California".  The fabric for the red version came from my sister-in-law Rita who bought it in Redding.  For mom, it represents the cross country drive from Georgia with 2 toddlers when my dad was in the Army during the Korean War.

#66, Periwinkle, is also called "Cowboy Star" which is why I made it for Wyoming.  Fussy cutting this fabric I bought in Laramie was SO worth the time. .

# 98 is the Waterwheel which I picked for New Hampshire.  Fabric was from Keepsake Quilting which is on the opposite end of the lake from where my brother and his family live.  Out of all the fabrics that people sent and I purchased, this and Maine were the only repeats.  Fabric selection must be a familial gene as it was my mom & daughter that picked the same ones I had.

#45, Grape Basket, is the block for Washington (b/c I like Washington wines) and since I used it for the USA quilt for WA, I also used it in the Betty Jeanne quilt since they lived in Tacoma for a while.


Many of my blocks are from other sources, but I'll be focused on posting the ones that appear in The Farmer's Wife. 

Better go add my blocks to the Flickr Group, then I'm off to do non-quilty things for the weekend.