This week marks a full year of the pandemic. I know it has been a long and tough haul for many. The year certainly had its ups and downs; the triumphs and….the dumpster fires.
For me, I’ll always remember the pandemic year as the year where I sat in my basement and sewed. With literally no where to go, I fired up my Pfaff and I dug into some projects.
Every Friday here on my blog I am going to show you how I pieced together all of the blocks for the Farm Girl Vintage 2 quilt in a year!
Please note that tackling this type of project is TOTALLY doable if you just break it down into small steps. For me, I found encouragement over on Instagram with a community of quilters who all committed to “Farm Girl Fridays” hosted by Bee Lori Holt, the author of the book.
I’m telling you, the adage of eating an elephant bite by bite certainly held true. If you just break this book down into a block on a weekly basis, you’ll have it together in no time (even if there is no pandemic! Fingers crossed!!)
How to Start the Farm Girl Vintage 2 Quilt
I started by 1.) purchasing the book (duh!) and I started by also purchasing a fat quarter bundle of Lori Holt’s fabrics by Riley Blake.
Now certainly you could use up scraps from your stash because this quilt is a “sampler” and a variety of colors are needed. That said, even when I do scrappy stuff I still like a cohesive look, so for me, the fat quarter bundle made sense because it featured similar tones of colors and patterns.
I mixed in some fabric from my stash along the way and I added a fat quarter here and there as well!
I also started with about 3 yards of background fabric and I used this same fabric throughout my quilt.
Organization is Key
Staying organized along the way will help you stay on track. Whenever I am working on a quilt, I keep all of the fabric for it together in one container and i label it. I “try” to put it away each time (I say “try” because I am very messy!)
I laso really liked having a design board on a wall in my sewing room to remind me of my progress. For this project, I just use thumbtacks to hang up some baker’s twine and I used small safety pins to pin up competed blocks each week.
Steady Wins the Race
Some blocks will fly together quickly and some (like the horse or really any of the animals) are going to take you a bit more time.
For the most part, I worked straight through the book, but there were some weeks where a complicated quilt block was just not in the mental cards.
On those weeks I “cheated” and selected something easy and manageable, but the key is that I returned to those complicated blocks when I had a chance!
I also found that committing to this project and having some accountability by joining an Instagram sew-along group was huge accountability!
I hope some of these tips help you consider tackling this beautiful quilt!
Come back on Fridays and I’ll show you each of the blocks and give you some more tips for tackling this beauty!
PS: My blocks are done and stitched togetherbut can you believe i’ve been procrastinating for MONTHS on what kind of border to add? I want it to be perfect, so I know that’s my hold up!
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