Farmer's Wife Roundup

So as with this time last year, so far January has been a washout due to Penelope waking up during the night, every night. All good intentions go out the window and the days are just about making it through to bedtime. The sleep has started to get better slowly and the sewing is beginning again but my mojo was flagging. I was starting to get bored and actually I was starting not to like my own colour scheme!

I considered bowing out gracefully. Sewing what I have into a small lap quilt and moving on...

The I started to think about what I needed to do in order to change my own mind. It would be sad to watch everyone else continue on this, my first ever quilt a long and feel that I was somehow off the bus. I needed to get excited again and I need to make it easier on myself. I felt overwhelmed by how far behind I was and how little time I had to catch up. What could I do?

I decided to totally miss out the Christmas week Blocks 29 & 30 Doris and Em. To just move on. I didn't love either block. I would cut out a massive chunk of work by just leaving them behind. Done. The backlog suddenly felt manageable.

I decided that I needed to lay all my blocks out and see how it was all coming together. I've only done 28 blocks so maybe I just needed to make some drastic changes to my colour scheme. There is no floorspace here though so I decided to photograph them properly. It's usually dark here most of the day and everywhere seems to cast shadows on the blocks. So I made a little ledge support in the brightest room and waited for just the right amount of light, then photographed every block so far. I feel much better about being organised and having a little set up to photograph each block properly at last.

Then I laid them out in a grid. Originally I had planned not to do them on point, but I have laid out both ways and realise that many of the blocks just work better on point. Something to think about.



Then I looked at them on point like they are supposed to be. Better I think. Seeing them all laid out made me realise that they are far too samey. I thought the grey background would bring them all together and the use of dark purple would help but it just looks weird having some grey, some purple and then some pink and low contrast.

Then I sat back and made a few decisions. 

1. To only make 1 block a week. I know I said this at the beginning but I have been straying by making both which will just end up in a huge quilt that I will never finish and I just don't get the time now to make two a week really. Making one halves my workload and makes it all seem less pressured. Suddenly I felt better about continuing. I even managed to start catching up a bit. 

2. To relax on colours and fabrics. The best thing about a quilt-a-long has been seeing other people's fabric choices and colour schemes. I see quite a few people are using a wide variety of colours and fabrics rather than a tight scheme so I have thrown caution to the wind and opened it up a bit.

You'll see from the grids above I had added my newer blocks using my new fabric! I bought some new fat quarters. Here I was committed to only using my stash but there is nothing quite so revitalising as new fabric. It really helps inject excitement back into a project.

After seeing Kerry's use of yellow and feeling jealous as I had banned yellow from mine, I blew caution to the wind and bought some. I mean if I am already dissatisfied with the colours then it can hardly make it any worse. Yellow and orange are now IN. So far so good. I feel quite daring. 

So we'll see. I feel a bit like I managed to fall back in love with this project. I just hope it lasts. 

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