WIP Wednesday #11: a friendly Farmer

I seriously cannot stop piecing these blocks.  They're like my daily sudoku now.

Farmer's Wife Quilt block #39: Friendship.  I chose fabrics from my late mother's clothing (and hey - a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness too!) and from her daughters' and grand-daughters' quilts to represent friendship across the generations in our family.  Piecing was fairly simple: I made HSTs cut 3 7/8", then on the pink triangle I attached a 2" square as a "fast 45" - I marked a diagonal line across the square (actually I eyeballed it, but you're supposed to mark!) and stitched along the line, flipped and pressed back, and trimmed the extra off the back.

Block #40: Friendship block.  The sunflower fabric is from one of those circles of fabric cut with pinking shears to decorate the top of a canning jar with a make-a-mix kind of gift we received from friends.  The rest of the fabrics are from the scrap bin.  I had to do math on this one - good old Pythagoras told me that the hypotenuse of a triangle where the sides were each  3" long would be 4 1/4" long (or awfully close).  So I calculated 3/4" for each of the pale green strips (cut 1 1/4"), and the center square was cut 3 1/4" (for a 2 3/4" finished size).  The HSTs are cut 2 3/8", and the corner squares are 2" - base measurement for both of them is 1.5"

Block # 41: Friendship Star.  Easy peasy 9-patch.  Didn't even break a sweat.

Block #42: Fruit Basket.  The only tricky thing about this block is that it's based on a 5x5 grid, so you have to remember that 1/5 of 6" = 1 1/4" (scant), and that 2/5 of 6" = 2 3/8".  Then the magic quilter's numbers: for a square, add 1/2"; for a HST, add 7/8"; for a QST, add 1 1/4".   There's another basket block coming up soon that is almost identical.

I don't teach math, but I do like de-mystifying the process of language learning for my students, and the math that you need to make quilts is a little bit like a language, I think. I really like the mental challenge of figuring out these blocks.  And this week, with school starting, I have had SO much nervous energy that these little 6" squares have kept me sane.  I did manage to get my entire year's worth of lesson plans turned in, but that's small comfort when I think of how many loose ends there are this year.  The first week of school is very much a WIP right now!  I've also done a bit of knitting on those stashbuster socks, but precious little else.

Check out what others are doing over at Freshly Pieced.