Rebecca versus the Alice Block: Farmer's Wife 1930s, Block 3

Farmer's Wife 1930s Block 3, "Alice"

I've been away from the blog for awhile, frantically trying to get caught up with everything now that the Mary Poppins show has wrapped up. Work, laundry, housekeeping, scheduling the boys' summer activities...  I still have a lot on my to-do list, but I decided that today, Sunday, would be a day of rest.  No work -- I went straight up to my studio after church and set about paper piecing Block #3 Alice from the 1930s Farmer's Wife book.  Because I like to punish myself when I relax.

Alice Block In Progress

There are a LOT of itty bitty patches in this block, which finishes at 6".  I know you can't tell from the pictures how small the individual patches are, so here's one of the segments under the presser foot to give you some perspective :

Foundation Paper Piecing on my Bernina 750QE with Patchwork Foot #97D

I'm using my straight stitch plate and the #97D Patchwork foot, Dual Feed engaged, on my Bernina 750QE.  Size 16 quilting needle, 50/3 cotton thread, and stitch length 1.5.  I precut all of my patches about 1/2" larger on all sides than the finished units, and tried to just focus on one seam at a time.

Even with foundation paper piecing, this one was a beast.  I was cranking happily along, doing pretty well, until I got all of the foundation segments finished:

All Segments Covered, Ready to Join Sections

Lovely, right?  But then I had to sew the adjacent sections together, which is like sewing a sandwich where the foundation papers on the top and bottom are the bread, and then you have layers of slippery fabric deli meat in between the bread, sliding around and getting out of alignment where you can't see them or control them.  After sewing and ripping and sewing and ripping again... and again... I finally tore the rest of the foundation papers away, pinned my seam intersections like I was Old School piecing, and sewed the meat together without the bread.  That worked much better for me.

So now I have three blocks finished from this book:

Design Wall: Farmer's Wife 1930s Blocks 1-3

You can find my posts about my other Farmer's Wife blocks here.  They're not perfect, but I'm not going to point out the areas where I see room for improvement!  I'm just glad I got a chance to sew something for myself today, and it feels good to take on a challenge and come out victorious (albeit a bit bloodied from the seam ripper). Tomorrow morning, it's back to the grindstone! 

This block used scraps of the leftover Amish black fabric from my Sugar Shack quilt, a leftover jelly roll strip of Kaffe Fassett, and a scrap of green fabric left over from my paper pieced pineapple log cabin quilt.  So I'm linking up with Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework!  I'm also linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times, Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts, Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt, Moving it Forward at Em's Scrap Bag, Podunk Pretties, and Design Board Monday at Bits and Bobs.  I'm also linking up with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Attic, because I totally need a whoop whoop today.  And now I'm going to brew up another latte and enjoy visiting everyone else's quilty projects in the linkups.  And THEN, back to the grindstone!