Farmer's Daughter Quilt

This is the time of year I really miss the farm.  Though I haven't lived on a farm since I was 18, there are just some things that stay with you.  It has been said that you can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy.  That may be true of the girls as well!

On the farm we had tomatoes that tasted like.........well, tomatoes.  When we lived in Wisconsin, we raised our own tomatoes and they tasted like tomatoes.  When we lived in Iowa, the tomatoes -- yep, same deal.  When we lived in Alabama, the few we got instead of the rabbits and deer still tasted like tomatoes.  Here in Arizona, we gave up trying to raise them.  It just got too hot too fast or something, so we have to buy them at the grocery store.  They are edible, but they don't have that just picked in the garden flavor.  They don't even smell like tomatoes to me!

I don't miss cutting weeds out of the soy beans while getting a sunburn.

I don't miss cutting the grass which was my job when I was old enough.  We had an acre of grass I'm sure and NO riding lawn mower while I was at home.  I'm pretty sure the year after I no longer lived there Dad bought one.  Who could blame him?  He had all that other farm work to do and no daughters left at home to cut the grass.

It is the garden I miss.  Besides tomatoes, there were fresh peas and green beans.  There were raspberries, squash and cucumbers.  There was zucchini -- I  know that is a squash, but, well, zucchini was a species of it's own.  It was cooked as a vegetable, but my favorite way was in zucchini bars or bread.  A big YUM to those!  There were onions and yucky turnips - sorry, don't like those!  There were also lima beans that are right up there with the turnips in my opinion.  There was also lots of corn and, of course, the fruit trees and flowers.  Tons of flowers as my mother loved flowers.  She was the gardener and the canner and the freezer of all of the above.

Mom was also a quilter.  Some day I'll show you some of the quilts she made. She had a wonderful sense of color!

Growing up in the country on a farm was a great place to grow up. There was work, yes, but there were also rewards.

This quilt has several names, one of them being Farmer's Daughter.  It is also called Miller's Daughter and Sisters Choice as well.  As with many traditional quilts it probably has has a lot more names that I don't know.

Most of the fabrics in the quilt are from a Judie Rothermel Cocheco Mills fat quarter set from a few years back.  Some are from my stash and the outer navy was purchased specifically to finish this quilt.

The block is set on point in the quilt, but here is a straight on view.  All pieces were rotary cut.  The pieced border is made up of some of the units of the block. Every other block had yellow in the four corners and you KNOW how I love yellow!  Even with all the dark fabrics, I think it's a happy quilt -- just like growing up on the farm -- happy!

Well, except for the pigs.  I was NOT fond of the pigs.  They got out and we had to chase them back into the pen.  Nope, didn't like the pigs at all.  Sorry, I just didn't.  The chickens were okay, though my sister would argue about that.  There was the rooster that chased her up onto the roof of the chicken house, but that's another story.  The cows were okay.  But pigs, nope, you can have them.

Hope you enjoyed my little visit back in time to the good old days on the farm.  Where did you grow up?  Did you grow things?  Did you SEW things?  Did all your food come from the store?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Quilt 'til you Wilt,
Lois