Farm Quilt #2 - John Deere panel

As I promised yesterday, I wanted to show you the three farm quilt tops I made (2 John Deere and one not)- all for the Farm Bureau dinner in the fall of 2019. They will all be door prizes - and hopefully, great advertising for The Quilted Twins in our little town of Dade City, FL. (My mom grew up there and we moved to FL -from WA state and MT- when Rachael and I were turning 14 and going in the 9th grade.)

Yesterday I showed you the first panel quilt I made up - thinking of a “kid” - since the panel is called “Dirt Magnet” - figuring it perfect for a boy.

This one - I wanted to make completely different. I wanted it to be way more exciting. I thought the panel much more sedate - and the words,”Tractor Factor” to me were much more “blah” than “Dirt Magnet”. I knew I needed to do something to spice it up.

I decided to go for a bargello - using black, green and yellow. Here are the fabrics I used:

Here’s how I did it.

I did not use a pattern and I won’t be writing a pattern for it - but I will show the stages - at least in brief. I couldn’t have tried this had I not made several other bargellos and understood “how they work” - at least more or less. I still have more to learn about them. Certainly putting this around a panel made it a bit more difficult than just working with strips.

In short, I made strip sets of fabric and then cut them and moved them step by step. In order to get the wide yellow look, I made 3 strips of yellow instead of only one. At first I tried using a 6.5” strip of yellow instead of three 2.5” strips, but I saw before too long that that wasn’t going to work well.

Here are the stages:

First I worked along one side. Then I went and worked on the bottom, continuing that design

I added the bottom row in its entirety.

Then I added the third side all the way back to the top.

Then I turned it around so I could sit on my couch and look at it while I worked on it. Now I've worked it so that all I have is some in the middle along the top. I had to make it look connected!

I had to do quite a bit of fiddling to get that last section to work at least reasonably well. I consoled myself with the idea that since it was the top, it will be under where the kid puts their pillowcase.

In the end, I’m pleased enough. There are issues with it that I won’t go into with this post. I learned several things making this up and I’m glad I did it.

But, the sad thing is, I can’t give you a pattern - it just won’t work. I did some wrong things and had to “make some things work” by trimming a whole row shorter, etc. Mostly it was because I had started out using a long yellow strip instead of short pieces. Let me show you -

Using those long strips meant that when I cut them, I didn’t have the right seam allowance. It’s hard to explain - just take my word for it. Don’t do it this way.

I’m not sure I’d give away a bargello pattern this complicated anyway. Not unless I had some sort of program that figured it all up for me.

So, just enjoy this one. I hope that for the Farm Bureau give away, it will be a popular door prize. I suppose we will hang them up on the wall before it is given away - just for the maximum impact and to make a statement for advertising purposes.

Next…on to sandwiching and quilting it!

And that’s what I’ve been up to here in my sewing room!

I almost forgot -

The panel is “Tractor Factor” and you can buy yours here!

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Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

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