August Farmer's Wife Blocks - Civil War

Today was quite busy for me. I baked 5 loaves of banana/bluberry bread, slow cooked 5 quarts of tomatoes (freshed picked from the garden this morning) into a yummy sauce with dried herbs (also from the garden), picked some other herbs from the garden and put them in the dehydrator, and managed to finish August's Farmer's Wife blocks in the civil war reproduction colorway!

I did all of this because I have an extra day off at the end of the month, and I can get more of my "monthly" to do's done. My work schedule is not only flexible, but kinda complicated as, I work three days a week the second and third week of the month, and two days a week the first and the last week of the month. This schedule is a because of the paperwork cycle the comes in and gets processed each month for my department.

It is the best of both worlds of working and staying home! I am very fortunate to have a job like this and a husband who is also supportive of this arrangement!

So without further ado, here are my blocks for August.....

PS...I have a theory on why some of the blocks are not quite going together as well as others, but I will have to do some research and pay more attention to next month's blocks to write about what is going on. Stay tuned!

More Little Somethin'

My daughter-in-law came to visit us this weekend. She is married to my oldest, who is deployed over in Afganistan, leaving her alone. She's about 3 hours away, so she came to visit. We went shopping, and she picked up some clothes for her upcoming vacation. But a couple of these things need some alterations. While I was working on these alterstions, I needed to use some straight pins (something I don't use while quilting) and discovered I needed a pin cushion! I had to find my pins and they were in a tin container. So, since I had just made some coasters for my sewing room, and had some scraps left over, I wanted a pincushion to match!

So I went here and made a simple four patch pincushion, that matches my four patch coaster! Whohoo!

A Little Somethin'

I been busy with getting the Etsy shop up, making stuff to sell, and not wanting to keep boring you with the same stuff....

I spent a couple of minutes and made two each of the following coasters. A pair for me and a pair for hubby. I put one of mine by my sewing machine and the other is on my work table. I had some pathetic christmas ones that had been in use for about two years. I just kept using them because they were handy and were doing the job. I'm not sure about everyone else, but it's rare that I take the time to just do something special for myself? And of course I felt that if I was getting new coasters, I wanted to make some for hubby! We're hopless, but that's what makes them love us:)

Any whohow, I am one happy camper with my lovely pink floral girlie coaster! And hubby is liking his manly man camo coaster!

A Few More

I sometimes wonder if I know how to count? I thought, as of a couple of days ago, that I had all of one colorway of my Farmer's Wife blocks completed for August. Umm, no, I did not. When I went to recored the completed ones in my journal, and tallied them all up, I was short three blocks! Imagine that...sometimes I wonder?

Etsy shop items

Here are a few things that I have been working on for my new Etsy shop.


These are coasters made with one of our local team prints.

Front side

Backside

Here all tied up in a bow.

This is a mini wallet.

Mini wallet opened.

Back side of opened wallet.

Key fob with "grunge" patch.

I am not trying to push or promote my shop, I am just posting the things I am working on in my sewing room.

Farmer's Wife "Breath of Avignon" August Blocks

I think I have mentioned before, that I am not the fastest sewer there is out there, and let me tell you, getting these Farmer's Wife blocks is using up more time than I ever realized. Then silly me, I take on the challange of doing them in two colorways? I guess, when I took on this challenge I said to myself, "How hard can this be? 6 inch blocks? What a breeze this will be! I'll just go ahead and do it twice. Yeah...well, I've only had a few that I can catorize as a breeze and after the first couple of months, I knew this was going to be really time consuming!

Enough griping, moaning, and being on a pity party. Here are the blocks I have done for August in the Breath of Avignon colorway.

Etsy Shop

Well, I took the plunge! I have an Etsy shop here. I also have it listed to the right. AND in celebration of opening my shop, I am offering free shipping with the code GRANDOPENING at checkout! Come back often, as I will be adding items on a regular basis. Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

FQS Designer Mystery BOM #3

Today was a wonderful day spent with my husband, we first traveled northwest to St. Paul, Oregon to Heirloom Roses (here). Their roses are seedlings not grafted roses and are healthier. I've have 7 plants that I got three years ago, and here is a picture of some this year.

Then I got to go to one of my somewhat local quilt shops called Boersma's Sewing Center here. I really like to go here, but it's about 25 miles from my house, so I only get to go about 4 times a year. They were having their annual basement sale, where the sale fabric ($6.00) is buy one yard get one free. Their basement has about 300 bolts to choose from, and boy did I ever choose!

Then I got to come home and spend the afternoon in my sewing room. I worked on my August Farmer's wife blocks, and the FQS Designer Mystery BOM.

Below is block 3 of the Fat Quarter Shop Designer Mystery BOM. It came yesterday, I cut it out last night and made it this afternoon. You can find out more information here.
I have pictured the previous blocks below to give you a look of all the blocks as we progress through out the rest of the program.

Block 2

Block 1

LQS BOM last blocks

These are my last blocks for my LQC BOM program. The 30's colorway is the program block and the Asian print is the alternate colorway I am doing. Now I get to plan a way to put them together for a top.

Rest of July's FW Blocks

Not much excitement here, I managed to get my Jully Civil War colorway done this last weekend. I now have 64 blocks done for this colorway.

The other colorway, Moda Breath of Avignon, has 59 blocks done, but this quilt along started in February, so I am on target to get both colorways done by the end of the year!