Old school..

Hmm, 3 sundays in a row with a blogpost; i'm beginning to see a pattern here...Ah well, better than blogsilence!
I got a question by email about how I handsew the Farmer's Wife blocks. I do them old school.
Print the templates, glue them on sandpaper and cut them out. I then draw each and every patch that is required for a particular block and cut them out. Not with a rotarycutter but with scissors.

 Oh, I also punch a hole in the template where lines connect, mark those points and connect the dots to get my excact sewing line.
Minimal waste, very timeconsuming and very relaxing...

The best part? All the corners match,

 each and every

 time, again and again...

This weeks update:

 and the last, the farmer's puzzle block that I tweaked a bit. it looked like a swastika and I didn't want that. It was ugly.

Another conversation I had:
"why do you have so many pincushions?"
-because I love making them, they're cute, quick to make and usefull-
"but you need only one"
-???-
"wait, what?  you change your cushion with seasons???"
-uh, yep-
"you're weird...."

So this week I went from summer

 to fall...

I'm weird..

Gifts!

I was a lucky person last week :) C returned from her looooooong holiday in the US and she brought gifts

I do know these a meant for Halloween, but in MHY (my humble opinion) every day is a good day to wear witchy socks.

I also got some rulers I've been wanting to try for HST's (and they're not to be found here!), fun fabrics (love a good polkadot) and a new JoAnns bag. Not that I will ditch the old one; the handles are not totally gone yet.....they are going to last a bit longer..
Thanks C!!

Remember the old iron with the missing plug? A friend came by and gave me one! He restores old motorcycles (among other things..) and likes my love for Featherweights and old irons. He found a vintage plug somewhere among his stuff and thought of me :)
Porcelain and bakelite, just what I wanted.

 I've been dying to see if the iron stills works and...tadaa..it does!

It takes a while to get hot, but it also cools slow. Added the fact that it is extremely heavy: perfect for Farmer's wife blocks with gazillion seams that will not go flat. I'm going to buy vintage-looking electrical cord coming week.

Next, my other neighbour came by and asked me if I was interested in this:

It's an old dustbin, the kind I remembered so well from my childhood. Ofcourse I wanted it!
I also made me think about how little waste my Mum had with a family of 5. Once a week the bin got emptied. A big car came by for the job and the noise was deafening with all those bins lifted up and down.
Now we have huge plastic ones that are emptied every other week and that sometimes wasn't enough with my own family of 5...

Last but not least my Farmer's Wife update:

Again 7 blocks added to the pile!
C wants to sew along too. She'd better get started :)!