Farmer's Daughter Quilt Mosaic - 81 Blocks

      I have now completed 81 blocks of my Farmer's Daughter Quilt.  Since last summer, I have been making appropriately-named quilt blocks to accompany my grandmother's 1916 diary entries, written the year she turned 21. 

     1916 was an important year in my grandmother's life.  As a Kansas farmer's daughter, she perfected her homemaking skills, learned to drive a car, wrote every day in her diary (over 400 pages in all), and began dating her future husband.  The next year, on October 24, 1917, she would become a farmer's wife. 

     Since there will be 140 blocks in the completed quilt, I have 59 more blocks to make.  The blocks are in the correct order in the picture to match their appropriate diary entries.  However, my blocks range from 6" to 12" square, so my quilt will not look like this when finished.  Still, it's fun to see all of the blocks together!

     My grandmother loved to write and kept a diary nearly all of her life.  To write in her diary was the last task of each day.  When she passed away in 1986 at the age of 91, her diaries were distributed among her children and grandchildren.  The earliest diary I have of hers is from 1912, written when she was a junior in high school.  The last one is from 1979, the year she turned 84.  She wanted very much to attend college - to study to become a teacher and a writer.  I think she would be pleased to know that people in 85 countries have read portions of her diary and have learned something of her life.         

You might enjoy reading my previous blog post:

http://www.starwoodquilter.blogspot.com/2012/02/sun-rays-quilt-block.html