Away back in 2019 I rescued a piece of sweet crafty goodness from a second hand store. The poor thing was just falling apart. Back in the 1990's when pre-cut pieces were all the rage, someone had put together this sweet little piece. I have shared this before, and also how I refurbished it and used it as the center of my center-medallion lap quilt or wall hanging. Today we are going to revisit this quilt, because truth be told, after I had "finished" it, I didn't really like it. Actually that isn't the exact truth. I liked it well enough but the checkered pattern on the border gave my eyes fits, so it was hard to look at. I should have used some solids to break up all the checkers, but I didn't have any. I am at a point in my life that adding more fabric to my stash is just not what I want to do. Instead, I am determined to use up what I have or at least thin it down. Having that in mind I took another look at the quilt, wondering what I could do to improve it? I decided to do something radical. Taking inspiration from a dear Youtube content creator called Marion, at her channel Marion's World. I just leaped in with both feet and began this wild journey. That is how my Freddy Finklemeyer Farm Quilt was born. Or should I say this is how my Farm Quilt Phase II happened?! Thank you dearest Marion!!! LOL
For those of you who haven't seen the first phase of the operation, I welcome you to dig through my older blog posts, as you will find a full account of it there. For those of you who haven't the time, the three pictures above pretty much sum it up in a nutshell. It came as the first picture shows attached to a nasty dirty frame, which I swiftly removed. I also removed the rosebud and green fabric that surrounded the center piece. I took the center and put alternating strips around it of sunflower and checkerboard in burgundy and green. I put the whole thing on my roll up quilt frame and hand quilted it. This was where I left it in May of 2023. In October of 2024 I took it out and looked at it and decided to give the whole thing a face lift, and have been working away at it every since. So now, even tho it is not completed, I thought I would take you along on my journey of discovery.
I'm sorry I haven't any pictures of my drawing up the tree's. You can see them already pinned on in this shot. The first idea I had was to add some big tree's over the top of all that checkerboard, so putting thought to action I drew up some tree's. However, it was then I discovered I didn't have any fabric that would make proper pine and fir tree's. Did I let that stop me, no sirree! Marion would have just thought outside the box, so taking a page from her book I hopped right to it. I had lovely fabrics of fruit and oak leaves with acorns, so just went ahead and used them. I knew I wanted this to be a farm in the forest so quickly drew up some chickens and a funny farmer too. This is me trying to figure out layout.
Here are a few of the tree's, there are six large tree's in all. I even salvaged the green fabric that had been on the original piece to use as some of the tree trunks. The tree's I placed on each side of the center of the quilt. of course they probably would have been better as solids, but they wouldn't be half as fun. These were pretty easy as applique, but were somewhat difficult because I had to applique just through the top layer of a finished quilt. That was a new experience for me and I thought it would never end. I really do like the over all affect tho.
For the chickens I just did some quick sketches of some funny biddies, similar to the ones already on the center panel. These I made a bit bigger as they would be in the foreground, and I wanted to try and create some dimension. I gotta say, chicken feet are not my strong suit. After I drew them I cut them out and traced them onto some small scraps of fabric. Since I had never done anything like this before, I was just making things up as I went along. I wasn't even sure how I wanted to make the chickens or how I wanted to apply them. In the end I just kept it simple, and appliqued them on as I had the tree's.
While I liked the chickens I wasn't head over heels about them, so I decided to kick it up a notch on my farmer. I first drew him on paper, and when I was satisfied, I put him together like making paper dolls. First the black cloth, which was scrap from an old worn out sheet. Then I drew the farmer on white cloth, stitched his body onto the black. Did his face with fine black thread, his hair with two colors of thread, brown and yellow. Then laid on the shirt and shoes, his bib on his overalls came next and then his pants. I left his left arm undone 'til later, so I could make a grain pail for him to hold.
I made a grain pail out of a small linen drawstring bag and the cotton drawstring it was threaded with. His overalls were from the cut off portion of an old hand towel, as was the little lump of chicken feed. Sewing that little pail on was a challenge, but it came out just as I liked.
Here is the corn sitting in the canvas pail. It was so satisfying to get this right. I remembered the old canvas pail hanging in the barn at Grandpa Thomas', and decided it would be just the thing. Grandpa never used the old pail much for feeding his chickens, that I ever saw. Most times when he went to feed them, he just used an old Folgers coffee tin. They would hear the corn rattling in the tin and come running. It was hilarious to see all of them running as fast as they could to get some corn.
I had agonies over this hat. I wanted it to be a floppy straw hat, and couldn't find a thing I was thinking of anywhere. When I drew that silly hat I was so tickled, I can't tell you how much. I just love how it turned out. I wanted so badly for it to have a stock of wheat too and would you know I ran across some gals short video. She was making a really strange looking flower in green and burgundy. I took one look at it and thought, if I do that in yellow and add threads out the sides, that will look just like a wheat frond. I don't know what the stitch is called, as the site was in a foreign language. Anyway, it makes a super nice wheat frond, and I am delighted. It was just what the hat needed. Not wanting to stitch the eye color, I just used some permanent fine tip markers that my son had bought me for a gift.
Now what farmer worth his salt doesn't have a dog?! I thought about drawing a dog for him, but then I was looking through my stash and came across some fat quarters of Mary Engelbreit fabric. There on the fabric was the cutest little Scotty dog. He was just the right size and in just the right pose. I couldn't resist, so quickly he was cut out and attached to my quilt. I think he is begging for a treat, don't you?!
Here for the last picture, are the plump biddy hens pecking at the corn, the farmer has thrown. After I had sewn them on and made an attempt at stitching their feet, I was not satisfied, so stitched each chicken standing in its very own clump of grass. That's one way of disguising ugly feet! ha ha ha
I have named my farmer, Freddy Finklemeyer. He lives with his family on a forest farm full of funny animals, which you will hopefully soon get to meet. I must say, once I got started with this, things just took on a mind of their own. So coming up you can expect to see, more tree's, a cow, a horse, sheep, goats, and many more funny farm things.
I hope this has brought you a little ray of sunshine, and a smile, and I pray that you all have a God blessed day!
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