The Farmer's Wife 1930's Block Tutorial - #83 Poppy

I'm feeling like the slackest blogger ever at the moment. I have been sewing quite a lot, and I'm hoping to have a chance to share what I've been working on really soon! I finished quilting and binding my improv quilt over the weekend, and I just need to get some decent photos so I can blog about it. And I've started my next class sample - more to come on that in the next week or two!

Today though, I'm sharing my next block tutorial in The Farmer's Wife 1930's Sew Along, hosted by Angie of Gnome Angel. My block this week is #83 - Poppy. I was a little dubious when I saw how many pieces are packed into this 6" block (over 60!?!), but she came together pretty happily in the end :o)

I've been using my stash of Japanese prints (mostly Suzuko Koseki and Dawaibo from both Polka Dot Tea and Sew Me A Song) for these blocks. I deliberately chose high contrast colours for this block, as I wanted to emphasise those tiny pieces. The orange print is quite small-scale, but the black and blue are both medium/large scale prints - I think the combination works quite well, despite the tiny size of the pieces. 

This is a pretty basic tutorial - I paper pieced my block - and the biggest advice I can give here is to identify which fabric goes with each template section and label it accordingly. This meant I could cut a bunch of squares from each of my three fabrics (mostly 2" squares, with a few 2" x 2.5" for the ends of the rows) and then piece them without having to think too carefully about what went where. 

Once I'd foundation pieced each of the sections (my friend Cat shares a great paper piecing tutorial here) I laid them out and double checked that I hadn't messed up my fabric placement. From there, it was simply a matter of piecing all those bits together.

I don't have all that much special advice here. I didn't use pins or clips to hold my pieces together - I actually find with really small sections like these, either of these tools actually shift my pieces just slightly and it causes more issues than if I don't pin. Go figure. I just made sure the edges of each pair of pieces lined up nicely, and sewed right along the solid line rather than using my 1/4" foot. I pressed my seams open in all cases, to spread the bulk as much as possible.

First, join F and G to E.

Then add the side sections of the middle star to (EFG) - these are sections H and I (pictured to each side of the block in this photo).

Followed by the first outer edge sections. These are sections C and D.

And finally the longer outer edge sections - sections A and B.

Every time I make one of these blocks I get the bug to keep making more - so once I get my last two class samples made for this year, I hope to get back to my Farmer's Wife 1930's quilt! 

The Farmer’s Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt: Inspiring Letters from Farm Women of the Great Depression and 99 Quilt Blocks That Honor Them by Laurie Aaron Hird for Fons & Porter/F+W; RRP $28.99 – Click here to purchase.