A BAP Wrap - The Farmer's Wife and a Little Stitching

It's a rainy, dreary day around here, but as far as I'm concerned the sun is shining because.....drumroll please!!!!!.............. The Farmer's Wife quilt is finally finished.  Woo Hoo!!!  After two years of stitching, ripping out seams, throwing pieces around the room (yes, that happened here and there - oh, and some swearing - did I mention that?) and countless bobbins of thread, she is finished.  Please excuse any wrinkles, threads, etc.  She hasn't had her final cleaning up or pressing, but I couldn't wait to show pictures of her.  So if you click to enlarge the pictures, just pretend you don't see the stray threads or wrinkles.

And a birds eye view:

She's a big one.  I can't tell you how hard it was to manipulate her through the final row of sewing.  I would have loved to get a picture of her outside, but it's raining buckets!!  Perhaps in the future I'll take her out and shoot some more pictures of her.

As there are 111 blocks in this quilt, I can't show all of them, but I'll show a few that stand out.

The Block from Hell - yes, this one gave me lots of problems - it was the one that originally came out looking like a volcano.  After cutting out and piecing another block, it's still not absolutely flat, but it's going to have to do.  It also doesn't have points that are defined.  Why sweat the small stuff, right?

The Fun Block - again, the points aren't sharp, but after 110 of these little babies, I was happy to have it finished.  This was the last block that I finished up.  In the instructions I had from the shop who supplied the Block of the Month, they omitted this block - they had instructions for a different block included twice.  Once I figured out which one had been omitted, I sewed it together and breathed a sigh of relief - and also had a glass of wine in celebration (okay - I had two glasses, but whose counting)??  One hundred and eleven blocks finished.  This one was fun and quick.

The Pointless Block - yes, I kept it and didn't do it over again.  I tried - I honestly did - by paper piecing - but paper piecing and I don't get along on a good day, so here it is:

And a Basket block - what would a quilt like this be without a basket block?

I learned a lot working on this quilt.  It was quite an experience sewing blocks that finish up to 6" inches compared to most of the quilts that I've worked on where the blocks finished up double in size.  There were a lot of small pieces - and some blocks - like the Pointless Block had at least 50 pieces.  And you know what is so funny?  Is that after all the cutting, ironing, swearing, ripping, etc., I want to make another one - or one similar!  I truly must be ill!  LOL

Because I've been spending so much time on the Farmer's Wife Quilt, I haven't had a lot of time for stitching, but I have made some progress on Ann Rayner.  I'm working on this piece for Becky's Challenge:

I finally managed to get off the alphabets and on to some of the fun stuff.  Don't you find that alphabets seem to take forever???  Ann is such a fun stitch - maybe because I'm using a 32 count fabric for her.  It's been easy and relaxing to work on.

So there you have what I've been up to the past couple weeks.  I'm noticed that I've picked up a few more followers in the past couple weeks!  Welcome!  And I'll check on your blogs soon.  I've been having problems with my gadgets and can't seem to add or delete people, so I think that I'm going to have to work on a complete blog overhaul here in the near future when I can find some time.  And I want to thank everyone for all your wonderful comments on my last post on Sun and Moon!  I tickles me to read them and I truly appreciate all your kind words.

And one final shot - guess who decided to make my quilt his own:

My buddy Bailey.  You can tell by the expression on his face he knows that he's not suppose to be sitting on that quilt!  LOL

Hope you have a wonderful week!