My Farm Quilt Revisited Part 7

 Today is a fun day because I finally get to put up this portion of my quilt journey. This was a real challenge, but came out very close to my vision of what I hoped to do. It is never so satisfying when you think of a thing and then can make it happen. Of course I never cut myself much slack either, and always have high expectations of the result, which can be discouraging when things don't come out right. My journey on this quilt was to learn to not only enjoy the process, but also allow myself to just try a thing and see where it takes me. And to not be so picky if the thing isn't perfect, as life never is. So without further ado we will get into it...

 

I thought for this part I would show you a bit more of my process. As you can see I am not a very good sketch artist. This is the beginning of my idea, of what I wanted. I wanted a milkmaid, a companion if you will, for my farmer Freddy Finklemeyer. I couldn't find a thing online to inspire me so just scribbled this out on paper. I would call myself more of a scribbler than a fine artist, or a doodler as some would say.

After my first ink scribble I scanned her into photoshop and then printed her out. I cleaned her up more and redrew in pencil, as I knew I would need to cut out the different pieces for patterns.What I have found is that nothing is going to turn out exactly like the sketch, some of it will be lost in the stitching.

 

Then it's time to hunt my stash for just the right fabrics, after I have done my tracing using the window as usual. I really liked this dark blue with tiny white polka dot print, with what I think are Shasta Daisy's on it. As I said on one of my earlier posts, this is much like putting together paper dolls. All the pieces must layer correctly, and therein lies the challenge.

 

I like to assemble all of the different elements I am going to use, or think I might use for the project before I start. This way I can pick and choose as I go along. I was debating what type of hair I wanted for her and then I remembered this funky specialty yarn I had in my yarn stash. It has worked for me before as dolls hair and so I went and hunted it down. I think the stuff is great fun, but as I am no knitter I couldn't begin to understand how you could knit with this stuff, it is so nubby?!

I got my underlayer put into my hoop and stitched down around the edges. This is just to help keep the overlay pieces aligned and helps give it a bit of body too.

 

I also cut out a small milk pail out of some thin gray fabric I had, and a tiny little scrap of the white sheet for the milk in the pail.

 

Here are the hat, the milk pail and the dress all laid in place to make sure they fit over the lines properly. At this point I took a good look at the whole thing and decided I wanted the dress to have more texture. You may not notice in this picture, but in actuality it looked really flat to me.

I thought I would just over-stitch the daisy's, and sew French knots over the polka dots. I was really happy with the results. But that wasn't quite enough.

I decided to fill the centers of the flowers with two different shades of yellow and stitch the leafy green stems of the flowers too. This just made the fabric pop and even tho it was a whole lot of extra work, it was so worth it. I suppose I could have marked it and just over-stitched where the pinafore covered it up, but decided that would leave it uncompleted. This is where you might say, my need to go all out kicked in. No one else might know it wasn't done under the pinafore, but I would, so there you have it!

 

The pinafore went on without a hitch, and I thought since I had sewn all that over-stitching on the dress fabric, why not edge her pinafore in blue to match the dress and stitch it down just around the edges so the dress can be seen all the way to her waist in back. Some blue French knots for buttons and soon she was dressed just as I wanted. This is where I went with the flow. When I was drawing this up for the pattern cutouts, I didn't like the way a bow looked, so changed the pinafore, to evoke more the feel of an Anne of Green Gable's style.

I also stitched up the bucket and milk, and changed my mind on the black hemp cord scrap I had chosen for the pail handle. I found some gray and thought it looked much better. Then I stuffed her hat with a tiny bit of poly-fiber, did up her hair with the funky yarn, and stitched it all into place.

Here she is stitched down on the quilt. Doing hands I find the most challenge. I have to cut an extra one out of white cloth, and they are so tiny, the cloth wants to fray. I then have to leave the sleeve end undone so I can tuck the hand up it, lay it over the pail handle and stitch it down. I had to mount the milk-pail on the quilt first, so that it could be partly behind the ladies dress, then lay her in place and starting with her hand over the milk-pail handle stitch her down. It was really tough to do and it is at times like this I wish I had much smaller fingers.

After I had her down I stitched a daisy on her hat to match her dress. Don't you think the yarn worked great for her hair? It was perfect for what I wanted and stitched on with ease. After each of my figures is stitched on with blanket stitch, I always quilt them down with a tiny running stitch. There is just enough cotton batting in the quilt to give them a nice bit of dimension. I love how the pinafore just naturally wanted to curl on one side, so I only had to tack it in place on the left.

 

Here she is in relation to Molly the cow. But lest you think she has done the milking, you would be mistaken. She is all dressed up in her best dress, and was just getting ready to set off in the buggy for a meeting of the Ladies Aid Society. But her husband had forgot to feed the chickens, and had left the chicken pail full of corn on the kitchen sideboard. So she took the bucket of corn down to her hubby. Wouldn't you know he had just finished milking the cow, so gave her the bucket full of milk to take up to the house. Wasn't that sweet of him?! Not! It's a good thing she had thrown on her pinafore before taking him the corn.

I have given my lady the name of Elizabeth, but she goes by the nickname, "Etta". As Etta was returning to the house with the milk, she saw the whole thing transpire with her father in-law and her eldest son, and the horse. Now she is doubting if she can leave her children at all?! If she leaves will it be utter chaos? Will they still be alive when she returns?! This is life on the farm tho, and she heaves a heavy sigh. There is always something happening or about to happen, and almost never a dull moment here. Between the unpredictability of the farm animals, her in-laws, her husband and her kids, she feels she is living life in a whirl. If it wasn't for her weekly Ladies Aide Society meetings, where she can engage in social interaction while quilting quietly, and everything is done, "decently and in order", as the good book says, she feels she would surely come unhinged! Thus she takes a few deep breaths, continues to the house, puts the milk away on ice, removes her pinafore, changes her hat, calls her father in-law to hitch up the runaway horse to the buggy, and is soon on her way to her nearest neighbors, who is hosting the meeting this week. Happy to put it all behind her for a few peaceful hours.

Thus ends another segment of my quilt journey. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have sharing it. We are closing in on the final segments of this quilt, and it is always a time of mixed feelings for me. I love that it is getting to the finish, but at the same time I have so enjoyed the challenge I don't want it to end. I guess I can look on the bright side tho, because when it is finished, it will then be time for a new challenge. I wonder what it might be?

I hope and pray that all of you are enjoying good health and that you have a God blessed day!