It is the end of the first week on the Farmer’s Wife sew along, #fw1920eppsal. The pace of the event is two blocks per week, so I am decidedly ahead of the game already. I have five finished blocks to show today.

#1 Attic Windows

With this block I learned not to remove internal papers before photographing the work.

#2 Autumn Tints

This was a very straightforward block.

I skipped over #3 Basket because I wanted to see how Gnome Angel would deal with the handle. I watched a live video feed last night where she talked about the handle, and demonstrated a way to deal with it. Her suggestion was to wait until the end when all the papers come out to finish the block. So I will be making it without the handle, and presenting it that way for the time being.

#4 Basket Weave

I had trouble with the edges of this block and actually needed to rip the joining seams out into the block to ease them. I documented that process with photos and might do a post about it later.

This block dramatically demonstrated to me the problem of blocks expanding in size when pieces are added together. This is a potential issue when it comes to adding sashing.

#5 Bat Wing

This block was really easy to assemble.

#6 Big Dipper

Up until this block I had been glue basting my pieces. I decided to go old school and thread baste this one. I started out using 50 weight cotton Sewing thread to baste so it would not show as much in the blog photos. See the upper left. I thought that this thread was more slippery than the thread I had previously used when basting, so I switched to a white cotton quilting thread that offered more tooth thus gripping the fabric more. I was happy with the results.

To glue or to thread baste, that is the question. Gluing is faster. Thread basting seems to offer me more control. It takes a lot more time, but it is meditative, and in keeping with traditions of EPP.

Another thing noteworthy about this block is that I was careful to baste my triangles so my tails are all pointing clockwise. This is necessary in order to achieve proper nesting, which is especially important when eight tails meet at one point as they do in the center of this block.

I gently clipped the tails of these triangles before basting. I don’t think I will be doing that anymore.

I said I had five blocks, but the truth is that I have seven, but the last two have not been documented in the Farmer’s Wife Facebook Group yet, so I will leave them for the next weekly roundup.