Spring Baskets and Tiny Brights

A trip to the lake for a visit with Jane always generates lots of ideas and gives me a chance to get caught up on some of her creative ventures. This time I got to see her new basket quilt coming together and help provide a little art direction too.

Lovely pastel plaids from men's shirts that are decades old combined with beautiful blue florals create a soft and charming bundle of 8" baskets with a genuine vintage feel.

She's also incorporating remnants from a quilt that she made several years ago. It's like that yellow and blue HST picot border was made with this quilt in mind. Her next decision is what to do at the corners.

My visit reminded me that I have photos of several of her recently finished projects still sitting on my phone, so let's get caught up a little, shall we? Back in July, I shared the flimsy of her colourwash, which is now quilted and enjoying pride of place tossed over one of her living room chairs.

The colours are so vibrant and the circular panto (whose name I forget) is ideal against the structure of all of those tiny boxes.

It has SO much texture!

And she wasn't shy when it came to picking her backing either. It's bound with the same fabric.

Such a beautiful example of why we hang on to those tiny scraps - a little bit goes a long way....M

A Passion for Whimsy

Jane has a wonderful imagination and is never shy about sharing her love of whimsy. She loves to play and that is more than apparent in her funky little Easter Baskets quilt. She stopped by last week with an armload of quilts for a quick show and tell after picking them up from Roberta. What a treat!

Started and finished during the pandemic, Easter Baskets was inspired by Anna Jantina from the Netherlands, the same quilter who also inspired several of us to make Little Trees. Could it be any more fun? Like the majority of her quilts, it is hand pieced; I think she wins the speed-piecing award!

Anna used bias strips for her quilt handles but Jane wasn't up for that so she switched it up to use a variety of colours of rick-rack. It worked beautifully, making what was already a charming quilt into one that was doubly so and giving it a certain folk art feel. The blocks finished up at 4" x 6".

And the large floral print for the border is perfect too - its got a softness to it that is hard to describe but it works so well with all of the soft, creamy colours and smaller florals that run throughout. I didn't get a photo of it, but it is backed with a beautiful butter yellow.

Absolutely adorable! She wasn't sure about adding in the darker prints but is really happy that she did and I agree - they add more depth to it.

A happy, scrappy masterpiece. My favourite basket is in the top row of this shot - the large floral Martha Negley print with the gingham trim and dark handle.

One last pic, for good measure.

Okay, maybe just one more....M

Pandemic Productivity, part 2

Welcome to part two of the sister act I like to call Pandemic Productivity, this time with a couple of minnie blocks from Jane. Last year she was smitten by tiny little trees that Dutch quilter Anna Jantina was posting on Instagram. She just had to make some!

It was only going to be a table runner project when she started but went overboard on the trees and made a whole forest!

They measure 2.5" x 5” and are soooo deliciously scrappy - just about anything goes - and it appears to be a speedy hand stitching project because she's got enough now for an adorable quilt. She still wants to add two borders and lace to the outside edges as Anna did with hers and the plan is to have it on her double bed by Christmas. 

These little guys are adorable so I followed Jane down the rabbit hole, but I only got as far as making myself a set of templates - nothing is cut yet. That's the difference between Jane and I. Anna used to have acrylic templates for sale, but they no longer seem to be available.

I was busy drooling over tiny trees when she sent pics of another amazing project (I swear she is not sleeping at all these days 😉). With all of the self-isolation going on these day's you'd be forgiven for feeling like a bit of a basket case, but Jane has taken that idea and turned it into cute, cute, cute!

It is inspired by another of Anna's quilts - adorable little 4" x 9" basket blocks. She doesn't have as many tiny florals as Anna has used in hers because she doesn't have access to her stash (much of the stitching has been done while in isolation at her sister’s home) so she relied on a few scrap fabrics that she had with her and then Linda kindly let her do some 'klepto quilting', digging through all of her scrap bins to try to use up what they had instead of cutting into larger pieces. Ah, the joys of klepto quilting.

The original pattern has bias handles for the baskets but she wasn't into that. When the lovely and talented Linda suggested using rick rack instead Jane was sold. She loves how it worked out. I do too - it gives it a really vintage feel, doesn't it?

She finds that Anna's quilt to have more of a summery palette while hers leans toward spring so she calls it Easter Baskets.

This quilt was started around the end of March and apparently she has already made about 120 blocks (!!!) so she will soon lay it out to see if she has made enough. It will probably be a throw for the sofa rather than a bed-sized quilt so I'm thinking she's pretty close to finished. Can't wait to see what's next on the agenda!....M

Looney Tunes

Well, either I have gremlins in my sewing room or I am just going looney (right now the safe money is on the latter). I had made a bit of progress on my wonky baskets and wanted to see what they all look like together, but apparently that was a big ask.

I was certain that the two original blocks were together in the sewing room but when I picked up what I thought was 'them' it was only one. Whaaaaaat? So the search was on. I mean really - how far could it have gone? I had only just made it! I got into such a tizzy that if I hadn't had photographic proof that the block existed I would have seriously doubted that it did. I know my sewing room is in need of a tidying up, but this was ridiculous.

Just before I went off the deep end I found it sitting on a chair just outside the room. Sheesh. I am literally becoming a basket case.

So now there are four blocks and there's a fifth under construction.

When it is finished I will definitely pay attention to where I lay it down....M

Getting a Handle on Things

Somewhere in my sewing room are a dozen scrappy, wonky baskets. They had lived on my design wall for a time but then were 'safely' packed away to who knows where when I needed to use the wall. The big question is where.

I've been mulling over how to complete them and looking at lots of ideas for flowers and handles that could be used to fill them, but it needed to be a simplified design so that everything didn't become a jumbled mess. Then I found this wonky basket tutorial. It answered my questions about how to build the blocks (the basket bottom would align with the edge of the block) and I realized that I could piece the backgrounds, inserting the occasional soft floral instead of filling them with flowers. All I needed was to figure out how to sew the handles. Brilliant, but where were those pieced baskets?

Long story short, I have ripped my sewing room apart from top to bottom several times now and they continue to elude me so, before I went totally crazy, I sewed a few new ones.

The handles are made with bias strips so my surplus bindings will be perfect for this - I just have to trim them a little narrower. I started with green polka dots but from the get-go something just wasn't right. The tutorial suggests pressing the curve and then sewing down the handle by machine, doing the inside edge first. It just seemed to be fighting me so I opted to hand sew them thinking that I would have more control.

After ripping out my first attempt and switching to a lighter thread I was optimistic but by the time I finished the first edge I could just tell that the outside edge wasn't going to sit right no matter how well I pressed it. And then the penny dropped. This particular binding was cut on the straight of grain and not on the bias; little wonder that it didn't have the flexibility it needed. Time to rip things out again!

So, after all of that, my first basket is complete and a second handle is now prepped and ready to go. One block is rectangular and the other closer to square, but that's okay - I will build the top around the blocks that I end up with.

Time to get my blood pressure back to normal and sew down that handle. Hope you enjoy some hand sewing today too, but without all of the aggro.....M

Slow Mo

As my cold clears up I'm slowly getting to the point where I am even the slightest bit interested in putting something together, and that's a nice change. Nothing huge, but a start. I joined my three scrappy basket blocks with mismatched pieces of sashing and laid them out with the picot border.

Because I just sewed my border HSTs to a size that I liked and not necessarily one based on the basket block size I'm going to need to insert a sashing along the edges to make everything fit. That's been too much math for me to get my head around lately so I think what I'll do is just sew a long 2.5" strip of neutrals together to keep things scrappy and then trim what I need to so that everything fits.

I need to lay it all out on a larger table to work on it so that I have at least half a chance of getting the dimensions right. And as I look at the photos I'm starting to wonder if I need to add the brown floral outer border. More decisions to be made.....M

Bye Bye To March

I can't believe that it's the end of March already but I also can't say that I'm sad to see it go. It's been a busy month with lots of travel for work and I am looking forward to being a little more settled and hopefully a bit more productive this month. To get myself back into the swing of things I dragged my finally finished baskets and small design wall upstairs to try out some borders. My little improv baskets are still on the board so they came along for the ride.

I love this large tone-on-tone print but when I saw it in natural light it was greener than I wanted - it just didn't seem the right fit for the other browns.

After going through just about every brown that I own I settled on the floral that I used for the base of two of the baskets and one of the handles. I'm really liking the black polka dot on tan as a transition border.

There's going to be a sashing between the baskets and I think another scrappy sashing around the whole thing before the borders go on, so I've created this picot border with a variety of creams and the tan/black polka dots to keep it scrappy throughout and am liking what I see....M

Whaaaaat???

Honestly, the older I get the more I think something happens to my brain when I travel for work. I just don't bounce back as quickly after being on the road for a few days and it shows up in funny ways.

Like this, for instance. I managed to appliqué three basket handles in my hotel room and when I got home I thought I'd attach a handle to a block to feel like I had accomplished something. Seriously????! Obviously the brain was still on stun mode! A little time with the ripper got things back to normal but it just left me shaking my head. I'll try again when the fog clears.

In the meantime, I've picked up the short sashing strips for Danuta's Garden and have managed to get five more of them together without similar incidents, so I guess that counts for something. I've got three or four projects that I'd like to be putting my attention to but I'm having a hard time landing on one so maybe I'll bake some cookies. The Official Cookie Tester needs to take something to work for a potluck this week so it might be safer for me to be in the kitchen than at the machine .. :)....M

Getting a Handle on Things

Three basket bases are now together so it's time to tackle the handles.

The instructions call for using a bias tape maker with an iron-on strip but I wasn't keen on that so I tried another method that I'd read about. I cut 12" x 1.5" strips on the bias, sewed them lengthwise, wrong sides together, and then pressed the seam toward the back. Worked like a charm.

There's a template included in the book to help with placement, which was nice. It would have been easier if I had copied the page as the book wasn't sitting flat, but I got there.

This is what the full Basket of Scraps quilt looks like.

I was drawn to the applique branches and blossoms that Edyta had designed but I don't know that I will do that if these are going to be a table runner. Maybe a little bit of it will find its way in...

So I've got three handles that now need to be sewn down - a perfect way to spend for a Sunday afternoon....M

Baskets on the Brain

I seem to have baskets on the brain lately.

After putting together my free form scrappy baskets I found myself flipping through Edyta Sitar's book Handful of Scraps and was charmed by a beautiful basket quilt, also made from scraps but much more structured.

The squares finish off at 1" so the baskets really aren't that large - I think it's a 13" block when all is said and done. I'm lovin' the scrappy browns across the top edge of each basket.

I probably made mine the hard way, using up tiny scraps and sewing the blocks together individually rather than strip quilting, but it's supposed to be a scrap quilt, right?

The makings of three baskets are on the design wall. Thinking that they will become a table runner, I used the same brown floral for the base for the first two but now I'm thinking that I might make them all different. They are lots of fun to make and I'm tempted to see what a basket would look like in only one or two colours....M