Our Lady By The Lake

Jane's Basket

Our friend Jane inherited their family cottage years ago and since then, thanks to her generous invitations, we have enjoyed many, many happy and relaxing times there, including so many great Canada Day celebrations. It is about a 45-minute drive from here and a real refuge for her from her life in Ottawa. She just started a couple of weeks' holidays so on Tuesday we spent the day together, trimming lots of trees and shrubs in the morning and then settling in for some serious stitching and crafting in the afternoon and into the evening.

She has been talking about making a basket quilt for some time now but I didn't realize that she is already well on her way. This one is made with a lot of old shirts from our friend Martin, who has great taste, so she has some wonderful fabrics to work with. The blocks are quite large - maybe 16 - 18" and she will butt them up against each other without sashing between them.

And she is using lots of great trims to embellish, along with filling her baskets with yo-yo flowers. She's toying with sewing a button in the centre of each yo-yo - not sure yet. And there will also be a few leaves appliqued in among the flowers as well.

With the yo-yos she has been able to incorporate lots of different prints and we got a good laugh out of a red that has skull and crossbones on it - not something that you would normally associate with dainty little yo-yos. The beauty of it is that when all the shirring is done you just see the overall red, white and black - no skulls are apparent!

To this point I am a yo-yo virgin (I've never tried my hand at making one) so she gave me a quick tutorial. I think I need a little more practice because my centres were bigger than I think they should have been, however it wasn't bad for a first try.








She's also making a second quilt from repurposed fabrics that I quite like as well - one that she's calling Summer Picnic. This one is being sewn by hand too. It is amazing how many quilts she whips up while sitting on the deck enjoying the summer sun!

This one has more of Martin's old striped and plaid shirts (and a really beautiful, subtle green paisley print) combined with vintage floral pillowcases that she has been collecting. The overall effect is both bright and soothing at the same time.

While I worked on my blue pinwheels she pulled what she had left of her fabrics from the closet and cut them into blocks, so when she runs out of blocks that's how large the quilt will be. I just love the fabric combos and think that Summer Picnic is the perfect name....M