The farmer takes another wife

 

What is it with that farmer? Is he a bigamist? A polygamist? Whatever he is, he sure has a lot of wives sewing quilts right now. What am I talking about? The Farmer's Wife Quilt-Along, of course!

Started by Amanda and Angela, the flickr group has grown from 19 when I joined to over 500 people! Yikes! At first I thought I might just cheer everyone else on, but seeing all the beautiful blocks was quite inspiring. And I had a gift card to use at a bookstore, so I ordered the book myself and got to sewing.

It really is quite addictive; while the group is a go-at-your-own-pace sort of thing, the idea is to do 2 blocks per week. Yeah, so, I started with five. I'm having a lot of fun figuring out the math for these, although the book comes with a CD of templates. Once I get to some blocks with more than squares and triangles I'll be printing those out for sure.

I've never done a quilt-along before, never really was tempted to until now. Those ladies that started the FWQAL are very talented and inspiring, and somehow knowing there are hundred of others out there sewing the same thing is motivating!

Many in the flickr group are going scrappy, but I have another scrappy project going on at the moment, so I decided to work with my little stash of Innocent Crush. I'm not ready to commit to making all 111 blocks in the book, but I think I may make a smaller version. It will be my Farmer's Crush quilt. :-)

I really like trying out these traditional blocks. I don't have a lot of experience making these, and so I'm hoping it will help me become a more precise piecer. I also really like not being stuck with one repeating block for a quilt, that gets tedious to me and has already slowed me down on other projects. Always having a new block design to work with keeps things interesting.

Want to join in? There's always room for more!