Farmer's Wife Quilt-A-Long

Well, I didn't make it to Sit & Stitch last night and I'm feeling slightly guilty.  I knew it was going to be a stretch to get everything together, especially since I had a 3 PM court date for the case to which I was appointed the CASA representative, and as usual, the docket was backed up.  I didn't get out of there until 4:30 and home at 5, which would have given me about 40 minutes to change, collect my sewing stuff, eat something for dinner, and get back on the road.  Sewing is what I do to remove stress, and when it actually becomes MORE stressful, it doesn't work for me, so I left my sewing room in half-packed disarray and instead my honey and I ordered pizza and both got out our work laptops to finish up some projects for the day.  On the bright side, it was a beautiful evening; I was actually getting chilly sitting on the back porch.

Anyway, one of the reasons I began this blog now is for the Quilt-A-Long I read about over at The Happy Zombie.  Monica linked to Amanda and Angela, who had put together a fun little project to make all the six-inch blocks in the book, "The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt: Letters from 1920s Farm Wives and the 111 Blocks They Inspired."  Well, I ordered my copy from Amazon and am waiting for it to arrive, and of course, the question top of mind right now is which fabrics should I use?  Monica is sewing them in her own fabric line, and since I am not brilliant or renowned enough to have my own fabric line, I guess I must go with a plan B.  A look at the Flickr group indicates that people are doing these in modern fabrics, in 1930's repros, in tonal solids, in red & white, in florals, and in Civil War repros.  Well, I am all 1930's out, with Elephant Parade recently finished and a Bow Tie next on deck for hand quilting, I have a red & white Jacob's Ladder UFO that's been waiting for years for a flying geese border, and I'm also halfway into the Civil War Chronicles Block of the Month as pictured below courtesy of the Fat Quarter Shop:

I should probably take it as a sign that Jo-Ann Fabrics is currently having a week-long sale on fat quarters - $0.99 each - and go let availability inspire me.  Then again, I'm also considering buying yardage of a single focal print and then a bunch of coordinating fat quarters for the blocks.  Or who even says that all 111 blocks have to go into ONE quilt?  I could make several smaller ones in various colorways.  I'm not fond of sampler quilts myself anyway, so I will probably donate the final product(s) to Margaret's Hope Chest or one of our guild's charity initiatives, which is one reason I'm considering using Jo-Ann's rather than stocking up at one of the many local quilt stores.  I suppose if I wanted to be truly authentic, I'd just use fabrics from my stash, and I'll probably use some of those too, but really ... what's a new project without new fabric?

The advantage to being behind in the QAL is that I'm already learning from others' mistakes.  Note to self:  use the templates and don't try to convert them into math.  Actually, if I buy the FQs at Jo-Ann's, the little pieces of cardboard they put in there to fold them up all neatly should double well as templates.   Win-win.

(Oh, and PS - we have a whole weekend at home with no kids until he gets them Sunday afternoon, so I PROMISE I will work on some curtains this weekend.)