Farmer's Wife Quilt-a-long

Really, it was amazing how long I resisted.  This quilt along is based on the book The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt by Laurie Aaron Hird.  Amanda and Angela are hosting it and the challenge is to do two blocks a week of the 111 in the book.  You can see how popular it has become on the flickr group page.

My reasons for not joining were the lack of time and overabundance of projects in progress already and the fact that the templates came on a cd in the back of the book.  I figured it probably would not work on my MAC, then I saw this.  Yes, some kind soul put them all in a pdf file.

So I logged on to amazon.com and bought it.  It came last week and I was immediately struck by the letters in the book.  They are answers to the question The Farmer's Wife magazine posed in 1922, "If you had a daughter of marriageable age, would you, in light of your own experience, want her to marry a farmer?"  

I thought I'd try to share a little excerpt from the answer letters each week when I show you my blocks.  This comes from "Mrs. J. E. F." of Valley County, Montana:  "How beautiful our home was!  If only of logs, covered in summer with wild clematis vine.  I told our doctor that after five o'clock on winter nights we became New York millionaires for we had our easy chairs, a big fireplace and good books.  We could not have had more in a mansion."

Since I am catching up a bit, I did five blocks.  It turns out this is the perfect project for me.  The history of the letters combined with the variety in the blocks.  I have a tendency to get bored mid way through projects, but with 111 unique projects I can't wait to try the next one!  After struggling with the color scheme vs. scrappy question, I decided to use all shades of aqua, green and gray with just a little bit of orange.  Here they are:

[1] Attic Windows

[2] Autumn Tints

[4] Basket Weave

[5] Bat Wing

[6] Big Dipper

I skipped [3] Basket.  Couldn't decide on a fabric selection!

So, have you joined along yet?