Little House on the Prairie Quilt: Block 14

Our third and final block for The Long Winter is one that represents the seed wheat that the Ingalls' had to grind up in their coffee grinder to make it usable for making bread, because they had run out of flour.  Almanzo and Cap Garland (a friend) made a daring journey to a house nearby that was rumored to have raised wheat over the summer.  The man had seed wheat left and it took a lot of convincing to get him to sell it to the boys, as he was worried about not being able to have a decent crop for the coming summer.  Cap and Almanzo made it back to town just as another blizzard hit.  They were nearly frozen and tired, but their heroic efforts helped save the town from starving to death.

I had a hard time finding a block pattern for this one.  I found a couple I liked, but they didn't work with a 12" finished size.  My mom looked through her quilting books and found a pattern called Middle Ground, which is what I ended up using. I thought the strips represented the many directions they had to go to get to the man's house with the seed wheat.  With so much snow on the ground, the normal paths were covered and they had to rely on landmarks and guess which way to go.  The main fabric looks like rows of small seeds and represents the seed wheat, the yellow is wheat, and the green is the leaves of a wheat plant.