Farm House Lane Quilt

I love my mom and I can honestly say she's one of my closest friends which is kind of funny because growing up and especially during my teen years we just didn't get along. At all.  Also, our tastes on almost everything are completely opposite!  But still, I'm pretty close to my mom and she is probably also one of my biggest cheerleaders of my life in general and also of my sewing and quilting.  I've made my mom quite a few different things over the past couple of years for her birthday or Christmas or just because which is always.  This spring though, my mom asked if she could hire me to make her a wall hanging quilt for her living room.  Ummm..Yeah!! =D

Since my mom's living room is decorated in a lot of blues and mauvey reds, I pulled together this pile of fabric to make a quilt that would compliment what she all ready had.  Definitely not my normal colors, but that's what is fun about making for other people - it forces me to sometimes play with colors and ideas that I wouldn't normally think about when I'm just sewing for myself.

She told me she liked the idea of house blocks for the quilt and I instantly knew exactly what I wanted to do.  Lori Holt of Bee In My Bonnet just published a new book this spring called "Farm Girl Vintage".  In the book, there is a quilt pattern for a throw sized quilt called "Farm House Lane" which I thought we be perfect for what my mom wanted.  I did adjust the number of houses and filler blocks I used so it would be more wall sized than throw sized.
Confession time - this was the first quilt I ever used an actual design wall for.  Usually it gets laid out quickly on the floor and picked back up before the kids can get into it.  It was like to have it up on the wall out of their reach so I could get the layout and colors just right.

These little star blocks took FOREVER! I think I spent more time on these 5 little 6 inch blocks that I did on piecing the rest of the quilt!

Wanting to do something different than straight line quilting on this quilt, I finally cracked open the "Beginner's Guide to Free Motion Quilting" by Natalia Bonner and made myself figure out this whole free motion quilting thing.  It only took a couple of evenings of fiddling with my sewing machine's tension settings and quilting up a couple of practice quilts (which my 3 yr old claimed for blankets for his lovies) before I had it figured out enough to tackle my mom's quilt.  And it turned out great!  You can't see the quilting too much in this picture below and I forgot to get any more detailed pics before I mailed it to my mom.

But anyways, I love how it turned out (even if it's completely opposite my normal color tastes), and most importantly my mom loves how it turned out. =D