Barn Block of the Month - Farm Girl Quilt Variation

 

 
I really like the idea of Block of the Month. I've done a couple...of which I don't think I've completed any. Typical. The quilt guild that I belong to does a Block of the Month where someone chooses which block to make, and those who participate make two. One block you keep (which will end up a 12-block quilt by the end of the year) and one block you bring to the meeting, where you get put into a drawing to win all of the blocks for that month. (I won January...blog on the results of those blocks forthcoming...)

This year we are making blocks out of the Farm Girl Vintage Quilt Book. This book is designed along the lines of one of the farmer's wife quilt books.

You can get this book in many places, including on Amazon. It seems to run about $25 most places.
Here's the link to it on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Farm-Girl-Vintage-Lori-Bonnet/dp/0988174979/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486925311&sr=8-1&keywords=farm+girl+vintage

It's a nice book with a lot of interesting blocks. The actual blocks, such as the ones pictured on the quilt, are 6" finished. The book also has larger-block options for you to set the blocks into - such as farmhouses, with tractors, etc.

I've been making the single block-of-the month blocks for the guild and for myself, however I could not see myself making a barn to go with each block. I just have no interest in making a whole quilt of barns. It's not really my style.

My mother came up with a brilliant idea: to make one barn block and design a way to hang each month's block on it. This way it's one barn and you just change the blocks like a calendar.

First, I made the barn.

Then I unmade the barn, replacing the white square with a barn-colored square. That square is where your "quilt block" goes when you're making the complete piece. I don't know what I was thinking when I made it white. Lame.

I sewed some detail into the barn door...(just don't look at the wonky quarter).

Afterwards, I opened up two spots in that seem to put the bias tape I was using to create the block-holding system. Then I sewed it closed with those in place.

Then I sandwiched it with batting and muslin, quilted it stitch-in-the-ditch around the barn, made a sleeve out of the muslin, and machine bound the piece with my fail-safe blanket stitch.

Here's the completed barn:

So each month I will make a square to hang on the barn. The January block is called a Butter Churn Block and includes the infamous, dreaded, half-square triangles which never come out straight. I picked winter colors of January:

 
After making the block, I layered a piece of binding and white fabric and sewed around the edges, leaving gaps for the tabs to hang it. Then I flipped it, inserted two pieces of bias tape, and top-stitched it closed. Then I quilted in the negative space.

Here's the February block - the Churn Dash Block - more half-square triangles (I forsee many more in my future). I did the February block with reds for Valentine's Day and followed the same process.

I needed two dowels to hang this project, both of which I stole from my mother. I even needed to break out my long-neglected circular saw to cut them down. Here's the finished product...

My mother made hers by blending different barn blocks from the book. She wanted a silo in hers, but we both didn't like the fact that the barn is only shown from the front and the quilt would be hung where the door would be in that variation. So she used the same barn that I did but added the silo to the side. Here's hers as a point of comparison:

Here's my only concern about this project moving forward...as you can see by the pictures of the two blocks, I have to place the tabs in different places based on where the colored fabric lays. I'm going to have to check every block as I make them to make sure the tabs end up in places where they can actually be hung. Not the end of the world, but something else for my teacher-brain to try to remember and think about.