Little Baskets - Embrace the Rainbow

If I had to guess, Little Baskets was started 4-5 years ago. 100 block sets were cut with a die cutter from pastels and some white. It was worked on at home and at a retreat, and then the reality of what to do with 100 4.5" blocks left me stymied.

It has been sitting in a box with only a note that 40 blocks were finished. When trying to decide on a pattern for a friend's upcoming grandchild, I took another look at the pieces. All of the basket handles of the 100 blocks were finished. A piece of white polka-dot fabric with multiple colored dots was in the box. After conferring with several friends with grandchildren and/or baby quilt making experience, I decided to set the blocks with an alternate square of the polka-dot fabric, making a larger quilt. A backing fabric from stash was pulled--checkers with almost matching colored squares to the polka-dot fabric (a completely different fabric line.)

Little Baskets, 67.5" x 58" Quilted with Snapdragons

I did end up making several more baskets of red fabrics, as there weren't any but the background dots and backing fabric both had some soft red. Overall I'm happy with the colors, though if I were to make the quilt today it would look much different.

Backing and corner close-up

A rainbow color layout made sense, rather than scrambling all the colors. It's my first rainbow layout, and I can see doing it again, perhaps with more planning next time.

This project also taught me to keep better notes when sewing a fussy design. The little handles are sewn down by machine on one side, and the template was still with the pattern, but to get a nice smooth curve, the bottom end of the bias strip just barely goes over the seam line. It's now on a note with the die cutter.

Fancy Fox

The Fancy Fox pattern by Elizabeth Hartman was gifted to me by a quilter friend. It was fun to look at all the finished quilts online, lots of different color combinations. Originally my thought was to use an ombre green for the background, but that proved too challenging. Another fabric in the stash was found, a leafy print that worked well cut into strips for the blocks. The fox I saw once near home, at a park was a red one, so red-brown prints were pulled.

Fancy Fox, 62.5" x 50"

The blocks are a bit exacting, and honestly a bit dull to piece. Most of the parts were sewn at a quilt retreat, as they were not too complicated and breaks were welcome. Sewing the columns of blocks together took a bit of time, but worth fussing with seams to get them to fit with the vertical sashing pieces already cut to size. It's interesting how some patterns need a scant 1/4" seam, where this one needed a generous 1/4" seam.

Fancy Fox close-up, Groundcover quilting pattern

I took enough care with this all-stash top to justify buying a coordinating backing (on sale, of course). It looked like a burlap-print green online, and when it arrived it looked more like a lawn - with the kind of stripes you see on baseball fields. Fortunately there was enough to match the stripes on the back. It had to work as binding too, as almost every scrap of the background leaf print had been used up.

Catch-up and Clean-up

Gumdrops String quilt - working through my strings. Simple tumblers made using the Fat Cats ruler, working with pinks, yellows and oranges with a black on white background. This cheerful quilt was popular with visitors to my studio, and was donated to charity.


Gumdrops, 54" x 46", quilted with Butterflies

For Mother's Day, my son gifted me with several hours of work. He chose folding fabric over yard work! That helped me get started on the long-overdue process of organizing my stash fabrics. I still need to get to a few more drawers before they are all done. Eventually it would be great to fit all quilting fabric into the drawers, and out of tubs. I have a growing stack of fabric to bring to quilt group and also donated some nice wool yarns to a local charity shop.

I'm slowly working through projects in boxes, and with the help of a new serger, finished three t-shirts and a camp shirt. It's been a learning curve to work with 1/4" seams on garments (both happened to be Kwik Sew patterns.) It's challenging to cut knits accurately with such a small seam, I missed being able to clip into the seam for alignment marks. Chalk has been the replacement, and is so much easier with chalk wheels (Chakoner or Clover.)

The first shirt made was from inexpensive cotton to test the pattern, so I knew that it fit. Two of the t-shirts were from fabric that I'd ordered from Spoonflower a while back. It was great to get a short-sleeved tee from one yard of wide knit fabric. Spoonflower only sells in 1-yard increments, so a long-sleeved tee from their fabric will have some waste and may just cost too much.

A twin-sized charity quilt using the Disappearing 4-Patch is finished, not pictured. It is well made and cozy, made from blue & green reproduction fabrics.

Knitting has slowed for a bit with the heat we're finally getting. I'm still working on charity projects, and also developed a knit stitch for scarves that is mostly garter with occasional slipped stitches. It gives an interesting accordion-like, reversible pattern. I finished a new scarf for myself with this stitch, and got to use it for a couple of weeks before it got too warm.  Another, shorter scarf used up a skein of self-striping yarn. They are pictured on my Ravelry page.