Farmer's Wife QAL - Week 3

So I'm a leeetle behind -- I'm not going to sweat it, though. I've just had too much fun with other projects, and my mind is teeming with more ideas for projects.

This block, butterfly at the crossroads, took me a long time.  The template cutting was kinda fussy, and because it is a 5-grid block drafted to be a six inches finished, the math was beyond me to avoid using the templates. That's not to say I didn't enjoy making it -- it just took me more time than I wanted to spend on it.

Block 14 - Butterfly at the Crossroads

Snowball, on the other hand, was easy peasy.  I love the simplicity of this block.  I also decided to go with a solid cream background as much as possible.  Looking at the other blocks I made previously, they all looked a bit busy to me so I thought to tone things down a bit.  I don't know, too boring?

Block 81 - Snowball

Punctuation Quilt Top Finished!

I love how this one turned out and can't wait to get it quilted.  I have fabric for the binding but need to find something for the backing this weekend.  My LQS ran out of Punctuation yardage, so I think I will go with a nice Kona or Bella solid in a light blue or green (or both?).  Hmm, so many choices.

The pieced border is my favorite element on this quilt.

Lots of fun colors from American Jane's Punctuation collection.

The deets were discussed in my previous post here.  Now I think I'm going to work on some Farmer's Wife squares to see if I can't get caught up on those.  I also wanted to try to make my own version of a Greek Cross quilt -- inspiration here and here.  I have a Bliss layer cake with only one square missing that I think will work beautifully for this.  Stay tuned!

Pieced border corner detail.

Yay, Another Quilt Finished!

One busted machine later, I am finally done!  This turned out to be an experimental quilt for me -- I did some pretty ambitious (for me) quilting that I enjoyed immensely.  My technique did improve significantly toward the end of the quilt, so more than ever I'm a proponent of "practice, practice, practice!"

These are the feather details I'm happy to show -- some of the earlier feathers on this quilt do not stand up to close scrutiny.  I chose to do the feathers on the patterned parts and stippling on the solid white, whereas it might make more sense to do this in the reverse.  I thought since I am fairly new at FMQ, doing the more detailed work on the patterned sections would be more forgiving.

Feather detail on one of the bottom triangles.

Feather detail on corner triangle.

Since it took me so long to quilt this darn thing, I decided to go with a machine binding technique that I read about here on Red Pepper Quilts.  I do love the look of hand binding, but I gotta say, this technique is SO much faster. 

The stitch-in-the-ditch on the front binding blended in well after washing.

Top-stitching detail on the back side of the binding that results from machine binding.

All in all, I'm happy with how this quilt turned out and am even more excited to move on to new projects (and other WIPS).  PS. I love, love, love my new Janome 6600!