QUILTS AND SUCH: Quilt Baskets

Life has been busy, but good. In fact, things have been sooooooo busy with quilting, teaching and working at Blakeman, Vacuum & Sewing that I needed to make some life changes. So, I'll be limiting my time at Blakeman's to teaching Bernina classes and moderating our monthly quilt club. That will give me about 13 hours a week to refocus on personal time to quilt and to spend time with friends, both of which have been seriously lacking. I may also have more opportunities in other locations to teach free motion quilting. THAT is a true joy. That being said, I was able to complete a GORGEOUS customer quilt this week. Oh, I love this quilt. My style of quilt for sure. So here is what I call Quilt Baskets. The pale yellow, pink tones and grays in this quilt are fantastic!

Linda asked that the designs on this quilt be kept somewhat simple because Quilt Baskets (that's my name for it) will be used as a side table covering. It will have items on top of it so the entire design may not always be seen. With that request, I was able to text with Linda as we began the design phase as to what was palatable to her. We ended up with flowers and butterflies in the center block area using Aurifil 50 weight thread in a pale yellow.

We decided to skip the small white inner border and proceed directly to the small piano border. Since this quilt is not going to be displayed or used for cuddling, I skipped the ditch stitching on either side of the white border. We didn't want that piano border to be too busy because I knew I wanted feathers in the outer border so Linda came up with the idea of very simplistic leaves in a vine. It worked great.

The outer border was gorgeous and screamed feathers but it was not a large border so the challenge was to do feathers that would have movement in a small border. This would be the part of the quilt that will be seen the most as it hangs down the sides of the table. We came up with a semi-scroll in the center of each border. On each side of each scroll is a series of straight lines for separation. Then a beautiful feather in each corner extending over two sides. I think I need to take photography classes because sometimes my photos are downright bad, but with the technological ability to scan in close, I'm sure you can get the idea. This is the center scroll quilted in each border using Aurifil 50 weight cotton thread in a pink tone.