Ok...so I have a love/hate relationship with scrappy quilts. While I have always admired their haphazard nature, I have always known that there is no way that I would ever be able to pull one off. I'm not random enough and my OCD would go berserk if I ever attempted something so mismatched. I have also really loved that eclectic feel of farm quilts, with their old fashioned style and fun attitude. But, sadly, once again, I have no ability to make something that is unbalanced. It just drives me nuts when something is random and chaotic. I just can't hang. So when my Farm Girl Vintage book arrived, I did a little jump for joy (because the designs are truly adorable) and a little sigh of despair (there was no way I was going to be able to make a quilt like the one on the cover). That's where my graph paper tablet came in (I'm lucky enough to have a husband who works in an engineering office and can get me big pads of graph paper!). I pulled out my pad of paper and my mechanical pencil and I set to drawing out the farm girl quilt I knew that I would be able to create. I wanted my quilt to tell a story and to represent our own little homestead out in the middle of almost-nowhere Colorado. We raise chickens, have a rather large veggie garden, I have a canning day (or days) every season, and I bake. It's these things that attracted me to the farm style quilts to begin with and I wanted to showcase them in a quilt that we can use everyday here at home, so that's what I based my design on. I'm also thinking that I'm going to do this quilt as a quilt-as-you-go style, completing one block at a time with batting and backing and then putting it all together with binding/sashing. Granted, I probably won't even be able to get to this quilt for many, many months, since I have a back log of quilts that I want to make, but...then again...since those other quilts are already put away into boxes and are stored nice and neatly...well.