Late to the Party: The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt Along

You've seen it all over quilty blogland, right? The latest craze, the online quilting bee, and a little lesson in farm life and being happy with what you've got too. I found blog posts about this from the beginning of the year, including this FINISHED one from February!

It is a challenge, this quilt along. There are no instructions for making the blocks. I guess it is assumed that if you buy the book, you've made quilt blocks before and can figure it out. There are lots of helpful tips on the flickr group's discussion page. There is even a pdf link so you can download all the templates, condensed to 15 pages!

My thoughts on making this: I have so many other things I need to be doing, I must be crazy to start it! But then I thought about how impossible it is to have any kind of quilting bee these days other than a quilt along online, and I've never made a sampler quilt or worked with templates, so why not? I have tons of scraps and stash. I don't need to buy anything but the book! And if Kim Brackett can squeeze this into her busy schedule, I will too!

So I have jumped in. I'm behind but catching up. At first I was really stuck as to what fabric colors I wanted to use. Christmas fabrics? Red, white and black? Thimbleberries? Brights? I even considered using all batiks. I think making this in all batiks would be fantastic. However, I have chosen the brighter Spring time color scheme and  am using a lot of leftovers from lines like "Farmers Market" (Sandi Henderson), "Hunky Dory" "Spirit" "Just Wing It!" and "Swanky" to name a few.

I think that if these farmer's wives, who wrote so consistently about the beauty all around them; the joy of things blooming and growing; how healthy and alive and at peace they felt every day with nature, if they could have had bright colorful prints like these, they would have used them. A lot.

I am making the blocks in numerical order. 1 thru 111 (or whatever number I stop at.) Not sure I want a queen size quilt or just a twin. Sorry for the blurry pic.

I've made 2 more since this one, I am trying to knock out 2 a day to catch up with the crowd!

Are you in?