Farmer's Wife - The finale!

Well folks, here it is. The end of the road for me and my adventures as a farmer's wife. And before the end of January at that!  I've had so much fun making this quilt and learned sooo much along the way. I can say I definitely feel like a more accurate piecer after having made all these blocks :) And more importantly, I absolutely love the finished quilt.  I knew I was making a queen sized quilt, but I am still periodically shocked at how big it really is. I am so happy I went with a solid black binding so that nothing takes attention away from the blocks.

The quilting was it's own issue. It felt like it took forever due to sheer size, and it was so hard to maneuver on my little machine, but I made it through. I did two straight lines in each sashing strip, so it is one big grid. You can pretty much not see it in any picture, and it is even hard to tell in person since I used black thread on the black sashing. It just melts right into it. Which is perfect. Keeps it nice and soft. There are certainly some puckers around the edges where the borders didn't lay quite right, but it is barely noticeable unless you are looking for it so I deal with it. The busy border fabric helps too. I reads as kinda gray in these pictures, but it is really a small black/white cathedral window type print.

And now a few pictures. They really don't do it justice, but I had to work with what I had. Which was no one to hold the quilt. So I trucked it out onto the front sloping lawn, in the freezing cold, ice and snow still in patches on the ground, while wrangling my daughter and trying to keep her from falling off the porch. It was an adventure, to be sure. Also, that would be why I have no good upright pictures. So you may have to tilt your head to the side to see it properly. All that to say, not the greatest pictures, but they capture the spirit of the thing.

Oh I am so in love with it! So traditional, yet so not! The back is all one piece, and while part of me feels bad for not putting more into the back, I like it and it works with it. I got to a point where I was going to shove it in a closet and not deal with it because I was having trouble figuring out the back, so this saved it. It was so hard to get enough fabric for a quilt so large, and the black and white prints that I wanted were just not working out for one reason or another. So this nice 108" backing fabric saved the day. And that is about it. A finished Farmer's Wife quilt. I can hardly believe it. And maybe when the weather is nice and I have some help, I'll work on getting some better pictures....maybe. For now, I'll deal with these. Oh and I'll snuggle under it. Every day. And maybe put it on my bed for a while :)