Pony Club

I have not yet basted my Farmer's Wife sampler quilt (although I have a quilting plan, and will get to this project soon), but I have had another sampler project brewing for a while now.  Last weekend I got started, made seven blocks in two days (I was inspired!) -- and I want to post about the project before any more time slips by.

I am making 8" blocks (finished) from Laurie Hird's second book The Farmer's Wife Pony Club Sampler.

I used (foundation) paper-piecing for the first block, Dakota Star, but worked from templates for the remaining ones.

Dakota Star, foundation paper pieced

A Dandy

A Beauty

Gold Nuggets

Alabama

Gretchen

Handy Andy

My palette is drawn largely from Ruby Star prints and assorted Echino fabrics, combined with Denyse Schmidt's "Chicopee" and some other odds and ends.

I couldn't tell you why this book is so much harder to find than Hird's first Farmer's Wife sampler book.

As a side note, I just discovered that spiral-bound copies of Pony Club are available through Laurie's website and on the US Amazon site. Mine has a conventional binding, but I think spiral binding is a great idea for a book like this!

I found a copy of Pony Club at the Creativ Festival last month, and now that I'm working on the blocks I can report that I love it.  The blocks are intricate, many are challenging, but I am thrilled to be working (mostly) with templates again.

Is that odd?  Templates!!!! But it's true: I love cutting the wee little pieces and fitting them together.  I love the lack of measurement and rulers. As mentioned in the book, pre-rotary cutter quilt block designs weren't tied to easy measurements -- any odd fraction of an inch is do-able when working with templates . Of course, I'm neither a luddite nor a masochist: I print the templates from my computer onto card stock, cut them out (with scissors) and then rotary cut freehand around the templates.

I actually have a few more blocks done than I'm able to share today (12 at the time of writing).  I am simply behind on documentation, but do want to say that I'm sooooo happy to be working on a sampler again -- and that I can recommend Pony Club!  It has been well worth the wait and the search.