Farmer's Wife Sampler Blocks 25, 26, 59

Love, love, love the symmetry and contrast in the "Day & Night" block.  There are many ways to make this, and I tried two of them :)

First block was using paper piecing.  One of the FB comments recently was someone using wash-away applique sheets to do their paper piecing.  Well, I happen to have some of those!!  Brilliant. Printed it off (ran really nicely through the inkjet), and pieces really nicely even through all the layers.  Wonderful!  

After it's brief photo session, I boldly dunked the block in warm water to do the 'wash-away' part.  No joy.  Used hotter water and a longer soak, and the stuff comes off a bit but certainly is not just dissolving.  Went to hot hot hot water, and my faithful Blue Dawn and soaked it while we had dinner. Sadly, still a bunch of yuck not coming out, and definitely not out of the seams.  But it is softer, so I'll dry it out and see how it feels.  After drying and pressing, still stiffer than the fabric alone but not too bad.  We'll leave it alone for now.

FW Block 59 Day & Night - paper pieced
Round 2 of this block, I used a method I'm pretty sure that Eleanor Burns demo'd somewhere ... used the freezer paper I had printed (before I decided to go with the applique sheet), and strip piecing. Pressed the seams in opposite directions so they'd nest when piecing them together.  Made two strips with alternating colour paths, pressed the freezer paper templates onto the strips and cut.  These came together so well!  I'll have to use this more often!  The trick will be to see a strip set within a block like this!
Fw Block 59 - Day & Night - strip pieced, freezer paper templates
For this lovely block I used the no waste flying geese method (here are a couple of sites showing the method:  http://blog.patsloan.com/2015/01/pat-sloan-tutorial-flying-geese-sew-and-flip.html or http://www.patchpieces.com/files/flyinggeese.pdf).  The method is great, but there was a lot to trim down.  Each FG is 2.5" x 1.5" - so teeny!
FW 25 - Cups & Saucers
 More trying alternative methods - HST from tube strips (methood here: http://www.quiltineering.com/hst-tutorial-strip-tube-method/) And yes, in this 6.5" square, there are 24 x 1" (finished) HST's. Itsy bitsy!!
FW 26 - Cut Glass Dish

Each of these blocks has some purple - celebrating all that Prince brought to us.