Farmer's Wife Progress, & Grandma's Visit

For those of you hoping to see some sewing progress, here's the tiniest little bit. I am pleased to report that I have learned a new skill. The Farmer's Wife quilt book comes with templates, but no rotary cutting instructions. I came across a very handy tutorial for drafting pattern blocks over at Bee in My Bonnet. (She has numerous very helpful tutorials for putting them together too :) Anyway, I had never been shown how to infer the size needed for each section of a quilt block just by looking at the shapes of the sections, and knowing the finished size of the block, so this was very informative to me.

I found this back when she posted it on the 14th of July, and bought a small graph paper notebook on a great back-to-school sale at my first opportunity. Then I spent several evenings sketching and calculating measurements for most of the Farmer's Wife blocks while I nursed the baby. It was very relaxing to me to sketch out the blocks and figure the measurements. I know there are resources out there where people had already calculated this, but doing it myself made it all make sense and now I feel I can easily go cut these out confidently and know how to put them together to get the block I want. I also feel confident that I could design my own quilt blocks and actually know how to create them!

I'm a self-taught quilter, so this is all new to me. I'm enjoying this particular project because there are so many skills I never knew how to do, that I am now learning. I decided not to draft patterns for any of the blocks that have a bunch of 1 inch half triangles. I plan to paper piece those, along with the ones with odd angles. That will be a new skill for me too. I'm hoping to actually get a chance to cut out fabric for at least one block sometime today. It's my "before I go to bed" goal. :) But we'll have to see whether the baby cooperates. And it's okay with me if he doesn't. He's already growing up so fast, and I don't want to miss a minute of it :)

Now back to family news and baby pictures ... :)


I know I say this every week, but it's been a busy week :) On Saturday, I found this gem at a yard sale. It's actually a futon bed, but it looks like a real couch to me! It is where the 20 year old is sleeping while he is here, and he says it's fairly comfortable. It's a real pain to make into a bed and back into a couch though because it's been broken at some point, and you really have to struggle with it, so most nights he just sleeps on it as a couch. Not a bad deal though for the $30 I paid for it! I got a lot of yard sale bargains this week, but I won't bore you with the details.

Isn't he angelic? As you can see the bassinet is already too small for my little bruiser. He didn't like it, and would never sleep more than 10 minutes at a time in it. We knew we were going to have to put up the big crib, but had to re-arrange the bedroom first.

As you can probably tell, we're a little limited on space. This is my husband's side of the bed, and yes, that is two large dressers stacked on top of each other. The bottom one is my husband's and the top holds the baby's clothes and the 2 year old's clothes.

My husband (with much too much help from the 2 year old) spent Sunday afternoon putting together the crib, after I had moved two bookshelves. We bought that crib at a yard sale for something like $25 - and we weren't even expecting at the time. I figured at the time that we would be moving to the other house, and using our current place as a full time daycare, and thought it would be nice to use real cribs instead of pack and plays for the kids. Instead, it doesn't appear that we will get the other house, but we have a need for the crib anyway. That's God providing ahead of time for our needs - before we even had a need!

Here's my side of the bed - with very limited space between the crib and our bed - maybe about a foot. The bookshelf behind it was turned the other way when we started, and the antique secretary was next to it, so that all had to be moved.

That left just enough room for my end table with a built in lamp, and my recliner, which is where I do most of my nursing (and a good portion of my sleeping :)

This picture is taken from the head of my side of the bed, looking toward the door. On the right side of the secretary is an opening to our master bathroom. As you can see, it's all quite crammed full.

I also haven't blogged this week because my mom has been here for a visit. She lives about 6 hours away, and we don't get together nearly as often as I would like. It was a great surprise to find that she had the time off work to come up for a visit. She had to leave yesterday, so now we're back to the normal, every day routine.

But it sure was fun to have her visit, and I can't wait to see her again in a month or so when we go to visit my sister's new baby (who should arrive in just a couple more weeks!)

I had to include this picture. He fell asleep on my lap, but I just love how they curl up back into the position they were in in the womb. Too sweet!

This is why I feel like he is growing up too fast. Already he is so alert, paying attention when we talk to him, cooing in response, and growing like crazy. Love this little guy! I just wish the time wouldn't pass so quickly...