It Takes A Village

It certainly does!  It took nine of us - Neked Sheep Wool, Calico Gals, Sew Graceful Quilting, Mt Creek Quilt Shop, Red Pine Quilt Shop, Prairie Quilts, In Sttiches Quilt Shop, Pieceful Quilt and Barnegat Bay Dyeworks to make this Fall themed village.  We started last June with our Fall theme and each one of us had a reason to do the building we did - Janet's barn had been in her family for a long time, the Farm stand is a real building near where Angie lives, Randa's small barn is what she sees out her window every day, Denise loves flowers and worked in a flower shop, Joy thought pumpkins when I said Fall, Kelly Ann wants a She Shed of her own (and so do the rest of us!), Terri has a secret yen to be a coffee barrista (ok I made that up), feed stores are everywhere where Kay lives and I grew up in New England where Fall means apple picking.

This year was the same as last year, I tried all different ways to put all the blocks together.  I laid them out on the floor, took pictures, rearranged them, walked away, came back, rearranged them again, repeated all those steps until I finally picked them up and put them away no closer to getting the look I wanted than when I started.  Well of course, I had more than a few looks that I knew I didn't want!  I was trying to convince myself that I could use all 9 blocks in a table runner.  HA!  That did NOT work, as much as I wanted it to.

I wanted the village to make sense and not just be blocks sewn together.  I was the one who insisted on the blue for the sky in every block (I am sure the others thought I'd lost my mind).  I wanted the background to represent a bright Fall day and I do love the way it turned out.  I finally decided on a wallhanging but I wanted it to tell a story.  The wall hanging I designed for last year did that and I was really happy with the way it turned out.  So once I decided that the barn, orchard and pumpkin farm would be furthest away from town, they became the top row.  Then the Feed Store needed to be near town but still close to the farms and orchard, the small barn and She Shed were more country than town so those three made up the middle and that left the Flower Shop, Coffee Shop and the Farm Stand to make up the town. 

Now to make it all blend together and tell a story - sheep got out of the farm yard again and are kicking up their heels in the pasture, colorful trees overlap block edges to soften some of the straight edges, the geese are tormenting the dog again and she's had about enough of them, the cats are settled into the She Shed and have had enough of all those noisy creatures.  You have just enough time to grab some flowers, pick up a coffee and pies for dessert, because supper is on at home.

Join us over on the "It Takes A Village Wool Project Group" on Facebook to see all the blocks and a few different finishing kits.