It’s time for the first block for the Farmer’s Wife QAL! I posted about it here and listed the yardage information to make the quilt below in 6 colors and with 35 blocks that finish 9″ unlike the book which has 6″ blocks, and this time I’m using the 6″ QUBE set as I noticed that a lot of the blocks could be made in a 3×3 or 6×6 grid. I’ll list the rotary cutting ONCE I think, maybe more but bookmark this page if you’re rotary cutting and I’ll just show the die #s in the posts from now on, and with that being said too, if you’re using another QUBE set the blocks would just finish 1.5 times the size of the QUBE set, so the 8″ QUBE would make 12″ blocks and so on. It should be FUN!
My finished quilt will be 60″ x 81″ with the sashing and border.
I’m cutting out the pieces one block at a time, so I might have more wasted fabric than I would if I cut all the pieces at once, but I ordered plenty and I don’t think the waste is that bad at all.
Block #1 is on the top left of the layout and I realized that I goofed up a bit and could have used a large triangle from the 9″ QUBE, but I then went into EQ and changed it a bit so it’s JUST 6″ QUBE dies and I will do that from now on or show options as there’s also a block that uses a trapezoid and a signature block, but those can be made with the traditional dies in the basic QUBE set 🙂
I picked 6 fabrics, White, Grey, Black, Light Blue, Medium Blue and Dark Blue, I ordered mine from Connecting threads and I realized when I got them that the grey is VERY light, almost white and the dark blue is VERY dark, almost black, but I think it will still work fine.
below is the CUT sizes instead of using the dies, if you’re using the dies, follow the cutting for those of course.
die #1 is a 3 1/2″ square
#2 is a 2″ square
#3 is a 3 7/8″ square cut diagonally to get 2 large HSTs
#4 is a 4 1/4″ square cut diagonally TWICE to get 4 quarter square triangles
#5 is a 2 3/8″ square cut diagonally to get 2 small HSTs
#6 is a 2 5/8″ square (it’s an on-point square)
#7 you won’t use
#8 is a 2″ x 3 1/2″ rectangle
This is block #1, I added a few more seams in EQ to make it QUBE friendly
The block is called Birds in the Air and it’s on page 82 of the book.
With Medium Blue cut out
24 of #5, 4 of #2 and 4 of #8
With Black cut out
24 of #5
Here’s what I cut out
and then I realized SOMETHING!!! I cut out with the 8″ QUBE NOT the 6″ QUBE, how dumb! Ha, I guess it happens to the best of us. LOL, I thought about putting these aside and starting over but then I figured that would be more wasteful so I matched up the shapes on the 6″ QUBE dies and cut again!
for the sewing it’s pretty simple, sew all the Medium Blue and Black #5 triangles together into HSTs
lay out stacks of 4 like this with the small squares and rectangles and sew the block sections together
each section looks like this
And sew the block together like this
It’s funny to read the stories in the book; Farmer’s Wife was a magazine for farmer’s wives and in 1922 they had a competition where they asked the readers if they’d prefer their daughter to marry a farmer or a city guy and overwhelmingly the answer was a farmer (maybe a bit biased since it was a publication FOR farmers). The book shows some of the answers and they are still true today in most parts, why deal with the city’s hustle and bustle and white collars when you can care for God’s creation and be one with nature? I live in the country, we’re in a neighborhood on 1.5 acres which is mostly grass, now we’re expanding our vegetable garden, also because of the inflation and food shortages coming and also because a homegrown tomato just tastes SO much better than a store bought one! I’m homeschooling out 2 youngest and we’re growing beans and corn now and that’s fun too to understand how and why things grow!
I hope you can link up below when you’ve made your block, not sure if you HAVE to have a URL/ blog post do link from, try it out and comment if you can’t do it or if you know of a better way of doing this!